Fugue
by L.M.Lewis
Summary: Everyone's past comes back to haunt them once in a while.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit from them. This is a work of fiction, as are all the characters within.

Rated: K+

**Author's Note**: Set three years after 'All Things Change but Truth', the guys get to return a favor for Doc Westerfield (the man who was not Mark's psychiatrist, in a series of snippets called 'Sessions').

There are references to an evidence-destroying event in 'The End of Civilization as We Know It', and a story called 'Maybe Madness', in which Mark went undercover in a psychiatric ward. There's also a brief mention of one of the corpses from 'Hellbound'.

Thank you, Owl, for beta support in the midst of many other commitments.

**Fugue**

By L. M. Lewis

**Chapter 1**

It was Friday afternoon at the Law Clinic, and McCormick had taken to chewing on his pen for inspiration. Paperwork had never been his forte. He was on the edge of sending up a silent plea for some sort of distraction—anything that might rate as an excuse to put this chore down for a bit—when Hardcastle came barreling down the hall and stuck his head into the office.

"Get your coat."

Mark looked up, abruptly focused.

"Huh?" Prayers didn't always get answered with such efficiency.

"That was Frank; there's been a shooting."

The pen had been dropped on the desk and Mark was on his feet reflexively, reaching for the jacket that he'd hung on the back of his chair when he'd started to break a sweat over the wording of one particularly troublesome passage. He'd already pulled a sleeve on, and was checking for the car keys in his pocket, when his mind backtracked one thought.

"Who?" He stood there, scrabbling for the other sleeve behind him.

"Westerfield," the judge said impatiently. "They took him to St. Mary's."

Mark froze, as though he himself had come under the bead of a gun. Then a half-dozen questions were suddenly jockeying for position in his mind. He settled for the most important.

"He's okay?"

"No, dammit," the impatience was approaching a full boil, "he's been _shot_. Now come _on_."

Mark was in motion again with Hardcastle ushering him along, out the doorway and down the hall to the back. McCormick looked over his shoulder. "But he's alive?"

"Yeah," the judge nodded absently. "Frank said he's in the ER."

"Who?" It was Mark's turn to be impatient. "And _why_?" That part might be the easiest. He supposed there was always a little risk to psychiatry. "One of his patients?"

"Dunno. 'Shot'—that's all Frank said. He just got word himself."

Mark nodded, swallowed his fear, and turned to deal with the back door. Then outside, then in the Coyote and driving, pure reflex while his conscious mind turned over a hundred possibilities, none good.

"He'll be okay." It was almost a mantra, definitely not based on any rational thinking. He was aware of a certain undertone, might have been panic, might have something to do with the last time he'd rushed to St. Mary's after receiving a call from Frank. Then he took a slow breath and said it again, "He'll be okay," as if he might call back his earlier prayer and substitute a new one.

00000

The ER waiting room only reinforced his earlier feelings of dread. They'd even arrived before Frank, and without an official liaison Mark realized they had very little justification to request entry or information. He let Hardcastle go point on the mission.

"Dr. Phillip Westerfield, he was brought in a little while ago."

The clerk didn't have to check her list. She looked up through the glass partition and asked, "Family?"

Hardcastle shook his head tightly. "No, friends and, ah," he hitched one thumb in Mark's direction, "_he's_ his lawyer."

McCormick supposed that was at least technically true. The services had been offered, though not required so far. If he ever was taken up on the deal, it would be a quid pro quo arrangement, though he didn't think telling the lady behind the desk that Westerfield was his shrink was going to get him anywhere under the present circumstances.

_Not your shrink. He's a friend. _

He fidgeted. There would have been a time, and not so far distant, when he'd have said those two terms were mutually exclusive. Now, on some level that he didn't like to look at straight-on, he knew that they were not. It wasn't that he saw the man very often—it had been maybe a half-dozen times in three years—but that he felt he owed him more than he would ever be able to repay in the form of routine legal services.

"Is he okay?" he blurted out, and the nervous tenor to it probably did more to convince the clerk than all of the judge's professional demeanor.

She looked sympathetic, but not forthcoming. "He's here, but we can't give out information. _Really_."

"Can you tell him _we're_ here?" Hardcastle interjected practically. "Is he conscious?"

The clerk frowned. Answering the first question was obviously tantamount to answering the second. She finally compromised.

"I'll tell his doctor. It might be a while. They're very busy back there."

The judge nodded his understanding. "Just tell him Mark McCormick is here. We don't want to disturb him, just want to know what happened and . . . what we can do."

00000

Frank found them in the waiting area. Mark was sitting, though with the usual low-grade fidget that Harper was only too familiar with. Milt had already decamped to the phone in the corner, and was working his way through a pile of change. He broke off from whoever he was currently annoying and ended the call, almost as soon as he caught sight of the lieutenant.

But it was Mark who responded first. He was now on his feet.

"Where the hell have you been? We've been waiting for—" He halted for a moment, frowning.

"Ten minutes," Milt finished for him, in a politer tone.

Mark looked down at his watch suspiciously, and then up, with a sheepish frown. "Well, it seemed longer." He pointed toward the door to the inner sanctum. "Nobody's saying anything. What the hell's going on?"

First questions first. "I ran by the crime scene. You know one look earlier is worth more than a whole bunch of reports later on. And he can't be too bad; he's the one who asked them to call me. That's what Mawson said; he's the detective who's handling it. Probably in there now." Frank stepped over to the desk and flashed his badge.

"Wait a sec," Hardcastle grabbed for a sleeve and snagged him. "Wanna tell us what happened? All you said was 'shot'."

"Yeah," Harper shrugged. "_Shot_. 9mm, pretty close range, out on the street in front of a place called the Pacific Mission, south of here a couple miles. You heard of it?"

Hardcastle frowned and nodded. "Place for skid row guys. Rough neighborhood there."

"Well, the guy in charge today—he's some kinda lay brother—he said Westerfield stopped by to see one of their 'clients'. Talked to him for a couple of minutes, then they both left together. Next thing he hears is a 'pop-pop', and a second later the client comes running back in, knocking people over, and barrels through to the back kitchen and out into the alley."

"And Westerfield?" Mark asked anxiously.

"The shoulder. One shot. Patrol gets the call pretty quick, but all they find is him down, no shooter and no decent witnesses."

"But he's okay?"

There was no time for an answer before the door opened and a woman in scrubs stepped through. She looked a bit put-out at the small crowd confronting her.

"More cops? _All_ of you?"

No one did anything to correct her misimpression and they were ushered in with a deeply resigned sigh. Once past the door, they could understand her concerns. In the hectic back area there were already three uniformed officers and one man in the sort of frumpy suit that Frank himself favored. The more-than-obvious detective turned toward them with a questioning look.

Harper made perfunctory introductions. Mawson raised one eyebrow at Hardcastle's name, smiled and offered a quick nod.

"Heard of you; didn't think I'd get to meet you." His tone still had a half-question to it.

"Friends of the victim," Frank explained. "How's the doc doing?"

"They're still checking him out, but the official word is 'stable'. You have any luck?" he asked.

"Not much," Frank said flatly. "Everybody agrees there was a shooter. That's about it. Oh, and there was another local, a guy named Louie, who might've interfered with the aim. He's a regular at the mission, though, and they say when he's not drunk, he's still crazy. He didn't hang around to be questioned."

He was aware that Mark had taken to fidgeting again. The younger man interjected, "What did Westerfield say?"

Mawson was already shaking his head. "He says if he'd seen it coming he woulda ducked. He doesn't even know the name of the guy he was there to see."

Milt and Mark had equally puzzled looks. Frank jumped in.

"That's why he was there, on account of the man he was _visiting_ didn't know his own name. The staff said the guy showed up there 'bout a week ago—no name, nothing. The people in charge over at the mission, they were calling him 'John', short for John Doe. They brought him in here Tuesday and the docs checked him over, admitted him for the standard three-day."

Hardcastle frowned. "Then he was Westerfield's patient?"

"Nope," Mawson shook his head. "Somebody else's. Westerfield said he didn't hear about the case until after the guy was released."

"So how come—?"

"He says it's what he's interested in—amnesia. 'Cept he didn't call it that," Mawson frowned. "He said, ah . . ."

"A disassociative state," Mark finished flatly, and then added, "Yeah, he'd cross the street to see one of those."

Harper took in a slow breath. Milt looked like he was thinking hard, too. The older man finally shot McCormick a quick glance.

"You don't think somebody's got their hands on that damn formula?"

"God, I hope not," Mark said with heartfelt sincerity.

Harper silently seconded that. It had been three years since a brief exposure to a research project gone awry had temporarily stolen the judge's memory. All the data, all the materials involved, had been handed over to the proper authorities. Which didn't mean someone else might not be trying again.

Harper saw Mark's almost invisible shiver. Milt's expression had gone even grimmer.

"We need to talk to him," the judge said urgently.

Mawson, having apparently picked up on some of the byplay, was looking more concerned himself. He gestured toward an inner corridor. "They had him down here before he went to x-ray. Might be back by now."

00000

Now that they had lapsed into pensive silence, McCormick heard a conversation becoming increasingly audible from one of the curtained alcoves. It wasn't angry, not even exactly _heated_, but it was fairly intense, for all that.

"Just a day or so, Phil, that's what I'd suggest."

"And what are you going to do for me here, that I can't do in my own home?"

"Well, physical therapy, for one."

"You know damn well you aren't going to start me on anything that soon—you've got me strapped up in a shoulder immobilizer. And when it _is_ time, I can come back and do it outpatient."

Mark was the first one to the curtain, but held back. The moment seemed inopportune, and the man inside was not expressing himself in the usual calm voice of reason that McCormick was accustomed to.

The other voice started up again, still patient, maybe a little concerned, "I'm just saying it's going to be kind of tough for a day or so. One-handed, and it's going to hurt like the devil, and there's a fair chance of infection—"

There was nowhere to knock. Mark finally chose the wall, three quick raps and a 'Hello?" Then he pulled the curtain back enough to be seen.

The discussion came to an abrupt halt. The guy who'd been doing the explaining shot him a questioning glance. Westerfield was sitting on the cart, right shoulder swathed in a dressing and the whole arm held to his chest by the pesky, and all-too-familiar device.

Mark made a face. "Well, it beats a cast," he said prosaically, "but not by much. You okay?"

He wasn't sure what he'd said to get a smile from the man, maybe he just hated being fussed over. The doc glanced over at _his_ doc.

"See, let's keep it in perspective, Hal. I'll go home, I'll put my feet up, I'll take my pills, and if I get into trouble I know to come back."

McCormick wasn't too keen on somehow having become a witness for the defense. He frowned.

"You're gonna be surprised how many things take two hands, doc. Driving, for one."

"My car's already been towed. The other bullet went through the windshield." He cast a quick glance down at his own shoulder. "Maybe both of 'em. This was through and through."

"It chipped bone," the other doc added. "Fall on it now and it'll snap like a matchstick. And it's your right arm, Phil. Screw it up that close to the joint and you'll never play racquetball again." He still sounded firm, but no longer quite so earnest.

Mark felt Hardcastle edge in alongside him. He got a small friendly wave from the patient, and a lopsided grin that was McCormick's first clue. _They've got him tanked up on pain meds._ He sighed. Tomorrow would no doubt be a lot uglier.

"But, anyway, there are cabs—I'm not staying. Are you going to make me sign out AMA?"

The other doc paused a moment, then shook his head briefly. "Your call, Phil. I think it's a mistake, but if you come crawling back in here, I won't even say 'I told you so.'" And, that much apparently decided, he turned on his heel, squeezed past the company, and left.

McCormick looked back at the man on the cart and gave him a more objective assessment. He was slightly pale. His eyes weren't exactly glazed, but neither were they as sharp as usual. Now that he'd won the argument, he didn't seem to quite know what to do with it.

"Not a cab," Mark said in a no-nonsense way. "We can drive you."

There was an echo of the earlier grin. "Not that little tomato of yours?"

"Nope, only seats two." Mark looked over his shoulder. "Frank? You could take him, right?" He waited for the quick nod and then turned back to Westerfield. "But maybe not straight home."

"_Home_," the man said insistently. "I'm tired. Been a long day."

"We need to talk."

Westerfield jerked his chin in Harper and Mawson's direction, then winced at the movement. "Already told them everything I know." He looked glum as he added, "which, I'll admit, was not a whole helluva lot. The guy came out of nowhere and I stood there like a damn idiot. If Louie hadn't been there—"

"You know that guy?" Hardcastle interjected.

"Louie Preta?" Westerfield lifted an eyebrow. "Yeah, everybody knows Louie. We're old friends. He's what they call in the system 'a frequent flier'. He definitely paid me back today. Didn't know he had it in him anymore." He shook his head slowly in apparent wonderment. "He's a vet, you know, 'Nam. One of the guys who didn't come out of it so well. He didn't hang around though, huh? Doesn't surprise me."

He sat there, his eyes gone a little less focused, looking like he was contemplating the possible alternative outcomes if Louie hadn't tipped the scales. Then he heaved a deeper breath and looked up, frowning. "Guess I could use a ride home."

"Maybe not home," Mark slid it in, very gently, very reasonably, "not tonight. We _do_ have to talk."

Westerfield blinked once, then seemed to be giving him a closer look, but no immediate resistance. He finally said, "Are you okay?"

"_Me_?" Mark slapped the heel of one hand to his forehead, all his gentle patience frayed to hell. "Doc, _you're_ the one with a hole in your shoulder. Somebody took a couple _shots_ at you."

The man on the cart blinked once more, as if he needed a moment to gather his thoughts, another clear indicator that they'd given him something with a little kick to it.

He finally started speaking again. Slowly, thoughtfully.

"It happens." Another faint smile, as if he expected some understanding from the man he was addressing. "I mean, not to me, but it happens in that neighborhood. And there I was, nice car, suit." He looked around for a moment, eyes lighting on a plastic bag with a drawstring, lying in the corner of the cubicle. "I liked that suit." He shook his head again. "It's a mess."

"Okay," Hardcastle stepped in, very straightforward, like a guy who'd had some experience directing traffic at accident scenes, "you and me'll head back to the estate. Frank'll drop us off. Got plenty of extra rooms and I can lend you a set of sweats. Mark'll go over to your place, pick up anything you need. Make sure everything is _secure_."

McCormick wasn't sure if that last word had caught Westerfield's ear, but the man was no longer protesting. He was merely sitting there, taking it in and wearing a more sober expression. _Might be the drugs are wearing off a bit, too._

"They done with you here?" Hardcastle added, not waiting for him to come up with any more arguments.

"Yeah," Westerfield looked around blearily, not exactly galvanized, but starting to edge toward the side of the cart. "Papers. Need to finish those."

Mark had him by the good arm, compensating for the sag as his feet hit the floor, and keeping him steadily upright. Forward momentum was what the situation called for now, that and a small dose of reality. He let the man feel just how much leaning was required to walk a straight course at this point.

Westerfield bit his lip, and maybe his tongue as well, as he signed the discharge papers slowly with his left hand. Then he went along peaceably.

00000

He'd only been to Westerfield's house once before, three years earlier, and he'd been fairly distracted by other concerns at the time. Still, it didn't look like much had changed. There was the same understated, not-quite-stark décor, and nothing seemed out of place.

Mark wondered for a moment about how he'd known, almost for a fact, that Westerfield wasn't going to float any alternative arrangement when Hardcastle had put the offer forward. It was a whole constellation of earlier impressions, he supposed. The man had no photos on the mantle here, and none in the office as far as he could remember. He'd only been in there twice.

And no one but a concerned colleague in the ER, with him suggesting a hospital stay for what sounded like convenience more than anything else. Maybe Hardcastle knew more about the man's personal life. They had lunch together from time to time, and God knows Hardcase didn't have all that _stuff_ to work through with a shrink. He and the doc really were just friends.

He pondered this only briefly, then took one more slow look around at the somewhat anonymous living room. He had his list, but he went directly to the office in the back. It had the same low-grade clutter as the last time, minus the box of papers and notebooks that had been their major focus three years ago. Westerfield had said he'd handed all of that over to the authorities, but, of course, even if he had there'd be no way for any other interested parties to be sure of that.

But a quick inspection of the room showed that if it had been recently searched, it had been done by consummate professionals. Every item lined up perfectly with a patch of dustlessness. Everything suggested that Westerfield preserved this room as his own domain—not even the cleaning help encroached on it.

Mark encroached, quickly and without much of a guilty conscience. He wasn't looking for anything except what shouldn't be there—he'd be damned if he'd let the man put himself in harm's way through professional curiosity.

The search was fairly ruthless, and completely non-productive. Nothing remained of Dr. Henry's disastrous adventure in memory-enhancement research.

Mark finally straightened up and let out a sigh. He was relieved; he might have understood the man's motivations for keeping something behind, but he still would have been disappointed. He supposed everyone was entitled to a foible or two; he just preferred not knowing Westerfield's.

He put that thought, and the room, behind him, and turned to his more official tasks.

00000

Hardcastle heard the car in the drive—the distinctive timbre of the Coyote that made visual confirmation unnecessary. He kept on with the dinner preparations, only pausing for a quick glance at his watch.

They hadn't had any time to _discuss_ it, before parting ways outside St. Mary's, but he was willing to bet his bottom dollar that McCormick's thoughts had been running along the same tracks as his own. All things considered, though, he must've made a pretty efficient matter of the search, and most likely found nothing, either that or he'd made up for lost time on the drive back.

The judge frowned down into the pot of chili. He was sincerely hoping his first assumption was right. It was not that he suspected Westerfield of any intentional wrong-doing, but he'd been awfully understanding of Hardcastle's own lapse of judgment, the time _he'd_ held onto a notebook full of dangerous information. Maybe it had been the man's guilty conscience.

The back door opened. McCormick stepped through and gave a hasty look around before he announced, "Nothing." He said the one word as if he expected to be understood flat out, and he was.

"Thank God for that," Hardcastle sighed. "Not that I was worried," he added quickly.

"Yeah, but you knew I'd look," Mark said with a minimum of chagrin. "And I knew you'd want me to. So neither one of us gets to say 'I told you so' this time." He set down the bag he was carrying, pulled up a chair and straddled it backwards. "Thing is, didn't look to me like anyone else had been looking. You think maybe we're completely off-base here? Maybe him getting shot at was just a weird piece of bad luck. Nice car, nice suit, all that?"

"Didn't sound much like a robbery to me. And they didn't take anything."

"Yeah, but that Louie guy got in the way."

Hardcastle shook his head. "You don't shoot a guy in the street in broad daylight and then stand around and rob him. That'd be just plain stupid."

"Okay, so they were trying to kill him, or maybe just scare him off. Or they were trying to shoot that other guy, John Doe. _That's_ a possibility." Mark frowned pensively. "We gotta find him. Louie, too."

"Yeah, well, the cops are trying to locate 'em, but Phil says he thinks they'll both make themselves pretty scarce. Doe because that's what guys like him do when the stress gets cranked up—they skedaddle again—and Louie because he's paranoid, scared of the police. He's got some heavy-duty 'post traumatic' stuff going on, the doc says. We used to call it battle fatigue."

"It's gotta be eighteen years."

Hardcastle shrugged. "Like yesterday for some of these guys. Never goes away."

"Well," Mark still looked vaguely dubious, "maybe we'll have better luck. You already put a word in to the staff at the mission?"

"Yeah, I had Westerfield do that. If they see either one of 'em, day or night, they'll call it to here."

McCormick cast a glance toward the hallway. "How is he?"

"Asleep, I hope. Upstairs. I told him I'd wake him for dinner. Which is right about now." He gave the pot one last stir and turned off the heat. "Table's set and everything."

Mark nodded once and stood, hefting the bag again. "I'll see if he's up for it."

00000

The upstairs hallway light was on and cast enough through the open doorway of the guest room to make out the general outline of things. Even before he spoke he saw movement. Westerfield was half-upright and reaching for the lamp on the nightstand.

"You're awake, huh?" Mark stepped in. "Lemme get it."

The man squinted in the sudden puddle of light and propped himself up a little more.

"Picked up your pills," McCormick reached into his jacket pocket for the small white bag, "and here's your stuff." He set the bag down and put the keys on the nightstand. "You got some sleep? Dinner's ready." He was fully prepared to make small talk until the man had his bearings.

"Ah . . . yeah. Must've." The squint had given way to a couple of blinks and a weary smile. Westerfield looked down at the bag next to the bed. "Find everything?" There was something in his tone that suggested more than the words said.

McCormick dropped his own gaze, felt his face flush and briefly considered, and then rejected, the notion of lying. "I found what I was supposed to find—and nothing else." He took another breath. "But you knew I had to look, right? We had to know what you're up against here."

"You could've asked."

"Not really." Mark frowned. "Not in front of Mawson, maybe not even in front of Harper. Not without getting you in a whole lot more trouble if the answer was 'yes'. And time was kind of critical."

"So, you really thought maybe I'd hung onto some of Henry's research—you thought I'd do that?"

Mark shrugged. "Yeah, well, nobody's perfect. Might've been curiosity, or honest concern. And I wouldn't have blamed you—how could I? The judge and I did the same thing once."

"But I didn't . . . _really_. Though I won't deny that I gave it some thought," Westerfield added quietly. "I suppose I finally decided it was too damn dangerous. No safer in my hands than anyone else's. But if that's what this is all about, then why the hell would someone take a shot at me? They'd want what I don't have, or maybe to pick my brain a little, not _kill_ me."

"You're probably right," Mark stood there with his hands in his pockets, giving it a little thought. Then he finally cocked his head, looking down at the other man intently. "But if you're so sure, then why'd you have them call Frank right away?"

"Ah." Westerfield frowned, "good question. Maybe it did pass through my mind, not that they were after me, but that the guy I was looking for was their target. He's still probably a straight-up disassociate fugue." The psychiatrist paused and looked bemused. "Hah, listen to me, that's a condition that's as rare as hen's teeth and I'm now pegging it as the garden-variety explanation."

He sighed; he looked around as if he was searching for a rational way to classify the day's events. He finally gave Mark a straight-on, intense stare. "Look, maybe John Doe _isn't_ a fugue. Maybe he's a case of severe exposure to Dr. Henry's drug—or one similar to it. That's what you two are worried about, isn't it?"

"_Exactly_." Mark tried to control his exasperation. "And why the hell didn't you give Frank—or _us_—a heads-up before you went over there to tackle it yourself?"

"Well," Westerfield managed a one-shouldered shrug, "that's not what I was thinking before I got shot. I've been seeing fugue patients for years. It's a special interest of mine since . . . well, for a long time. Why do you think Neely sicced me on Hardcastle three years ago?"

"Yeah, okay, I suppose I should be glad you called when you did." McCormick frowned and then shook his head. "And dinner is ready." He offered him a hand up. "Chili. It's one of the judge's specialties. We have an extensive repertoire of one-handed meals available here at the Gulls Way Bed and Breakfast." Mark forced his expression into an unconcerned smile.

Everything else could wait until later.

00000

There wasn't much talk at dinner, and Hardcastle thought both Mark and the company were off their feed. Chili might have been a poor choice for a meal eaten so late in the evening—it was past nine already—but he knew from past experience that shoulder wounds weren't compatible with steak.

"You should try to get something down," he encouraged. "You've got pills to take."

"Oh, the antibiotic is just a precaution. Hal being nervous." Westerfield picked the spoon up, and put it down, looking a bit frayed. "And the pain pills are optional."

"They won't be tomorrow." Mark said it quietly, but with an air of experience that spoke for itself.

"He's got a point there, Doc," the judge nodded. "It's always a little worse the next day. Then it gets better."

"Uh-huh," the other man muttered, as he took another spoonful and then, around that, "but it's very good chili."

Then the conversation seemed to peter out again, after few more nods and murmurs from the others. It occurred to Hardcastle that he might be exerting a dampening effect on things, that Mark and Westerfield had connected some time ago on a wavelength that he really wasn't privy to.

He'd always just stood back from that because it seemed to help McCormick to have someone to use as a sounding board. It might even have been the roots of the thing. He knew the doc had been there for Mark three years ago, at a time when he himself had definitely not been.

And now if Westerfield was in some sort of trouble, it might make more sense for him to ask McCormick for help. He _was_ his lawyer, at least in a potential sense, and he might easily be perceived as the more flexible confessor, as well.

But he got the sense that Mark hadn't made any progress, either.

"Tomorrow," the judge said abruptly. Both the other men looked up, both looked startled. Hardcastle took a breath, tried out a small smile, tried to set everything down a notch or two. "We'll figure out what's up with your car."

That worked. Westerfield managed a nod.

"And then, maybe, if you're up to it, you and McCormick can swing by the mission, touch base there, see if anyone's seen John Doe or Louie. Assuming Frank hasn't come up with anything."

"Okay," the doc nodded again, "that's a plan. I'll let them know at St. Mary's, too. Louie shows up there a lot, usually toward the end of the month . . . I need to make sure he's all right. If nothing else, I should thank him."

He was frowning down thoughtfully at his food again. After a moment of this, he lifted his head. "And then Mark can run me home after that." This was stated with a tone of matter-of-fact optimism.

Hardcastle tried to look placating. "Now, Doc—it really does get worse before it gets better."

Westerfield shrugged casually, though still only using one shoulder. "It's not all that bad right now. And it's no reflection on the chili," he added with a smile, "but I really ought to—"

"At least give us a chance to figure out who that guy was shooting at," Mark interrupted, leaning forward slightly.

"The more I think about it, the more convinced I am it was just random bad luck. You can't hog it all, Mark." Westerfield was keeping his expression light and unconcerned.

"Maybe it was just random, but if it was, then the guy who shot you may think you got a closer look at him than you did, and it wouldn't be hard for him to figure out who his random victim was and maybe come back to take you out as a witness."

It had come out a little pressured, but very earnest. Hardcastle sat back and let the younger man marshal his arguments, glad, for once, not to be at the receiving end of them.

"And if it _wasn't _random," Mark continued on, "then we still need to figure out if he was gunning for you, or John Doe, and _why_. We've got to find this guy, Doe—"

"Might be tough."

Mark nodded in ready agreement. "But at the least he may have gotten a better look at the shooter, or he might be who the shooter was aiming for—he may _still_ be a target. How hard are the cops going to look?"

"I already said it was a plan. I'm in," Westerfield said mildly. "And I do appreciate all the help," he gave the surroundings a brief sweep of his eyes and then gave a quick nod to the two men. "I'll admit the whole thing's been a bit disconcerting. I probably was a little more off my game than I realized earlier this evening." He smiled self-deprecatingly. "But I'm better now, and once I've had a good night's sleep I'll be—"

"A sitting duck," Mark waved the rest of Westerfield's argument away with one hand. "A one-armed sitting duck. The easiest kind."

He glowered. Hardcastle thought he had that down pretty good and the doc looked like a man who wasn't used to being glowered at.

"The weekend," Hardcastle suggested quietly. Once again he had both men's attention. "That's all. Just the two days. That's not unreasonable, is it?" He slipped into the 'good cop' role without a moment of hesitation. Mark held onto his glower enthusiastically.

The judge could see Westerfield wavering on the brink, undoubtedly feeling outflanked and outnumbered, maybe even a little convinced.

"It's not long. Two days," Mark broke down and added a little coaxing of his own. "Let's just see how much we turn up by then and which direction it's pointing. Then Monday morning you can make a more informed decision."

"Sunday night," their guest said, just slightly sulky.

"Deal," Mark grinned.

00000

By the time Mark finished the dishes, and adjourned to the den, the judge was sitting alone. McCormick's raised eyebrow of inquiry got a single finger pointing upward in reply. He stepped into the room and pulled the doors shut quietly behind him.

He dropped into a chair. "I wasn't too hard on him, was I?"

Hardcastle eased back in his own seat, behind his desk. He looked like he was giving it some thought. He finally shook his head.

"Nah. It all sounded pretty reasonable to me. He's a reasonable guy, the doc. So he listened." Then he furrowed his brow, just for a moment. "Doesn't mean he has to like it, though. And I don't think it'll be as easy on Sunday night, if you don't have more answers by then."

Mark nodded, then cocked his head at something he'd thought of while he'd been doing the dishes.

"What you were saying, over dinner—about him and me going to have a look tomorrow for Louie and Doe . . . You aren't coming along?"

"Nah, three would definitely be a crowd on this expedition. Both these guys sound like they'll spook pretty easy. And besides, I think even if Westerfield tries to give you the slip, you ought to be able to outrun him."

McCormick made a face. "So where are you going to be?"

"Got a few things to do," Hardcastle said cryptically.

"Dr. Henry?"

"Nah, already called him this evening, while you were doing the black bag job on Westerfield's place."

"Hey, I had the _key_," Mark drew back indignantly but kept his voice low. "There's gotta be some kind of implied consent there."

Hardcastle harrumphed, equally quietly, but took the argument no further.

"Henry's fine." He scratched his nose thoughtfully. "Not a whisper at his end. No mysterious characters hanging around, nothing out of place at home. They moved to Arizona, you know, him and his daughter."

Mark knew. He'd gotten a Christmas card from the grateful Rebecca Henry the past three years running. He was equally aware that there had been no comparable greetings for the judge.

"He handed everything over to the authorities as well," Hardcastle added. Then, after a pause, he went on a little slower, "You know he says he's never really gotten it all back, his memories, I mean."

"He got a lot stiffer dose than you—"

"Oh," the judge waved the reassurance away, "I'm okay." Then he stopped and frowned very briefly before adding, "I suppose . . . as much as you can ever be sure you haven't changed. I mean, if I had, would I remember it was different?"

"_I _would." Mark smiled. "And you haven't."

Hardcastle gave him a considering look. "Well, I'll have to trust you on that one. But, anyway, Henry's fine. No one's bothered him."

"So, you've already warned him, what else are you going to check into?" He waited a moment for the response and, when it wasn't all that forthcoming he added, abruptly, "Not that damn 'People's Freedom Army,' no way. Besides," he frowned worriedly, "they're all still in prison, right?"

"Already checked into that, too," the judge nodded. "No loose ends there that anybody knows about. I'll leave that bit to Frank's guys. They've got a whole task force for keeping track of the fringe wackos."

"Then _what_?" Mark said, sounding a little aggravated. "It's something I won't approve of, huh?"

Hardcastle shook his head. "Nah, nothing dangerous, _or_ illegal . . . not that you always disapprove of the illegal stuff," he added in a mutter. "First off, I'll make sure Phil's car been processed—they're going to need those slugs to make a case once we find this guy—"

"Okay, that's a couple of phone calls and twenty minutes," Mark said suspiciously.

"Look, kiddo, you have to have a little more faith. I'm just going to talk to a few people, see what else I can turn up. I can't tell you exactly who or what because I haven't done it yet. Heck, I'll even call Westerfield's insurance guy for him. See? Practical stuff like that."

Mark looked at him, still a little suspicious, but finally let out a sigh of resignation.

"Okay. I just don't want to come home and find you've gone haring off, not even a note on the kitchen table."

"I promise," Hardcastle grinned, "I'll leave a note."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Saturday morning McCormick awoke before the alarm went off. It might have had something to do with the notion that he was on a deadline, with only thirty-six hours to nail this thing, one way or another, before Westerfield insisted on moving back to his own digs.

He found the two of them in the kitchen—the doc leaning a little to his bad side and poking at a plate of eggs. Hardcastle appeared concerned. Mark helped himself to a cup of coffee and tried not to look too superior about his skills in the prophecy department.

"Taken your pills yet?" he said, in the mildest, least judgmental tone he could muster.

Westerfield muttered something that might've been yes, but sounded like it had a couple of extra, less-positive words attached.

"Well, good," Mark nodded, again very mild. Then he frowned. The man really did look fairly done-in. "We could stop off back at St. Mary's—"

Westerfield shot him a sharp glance, and then a second one, almost as annoyed, at the judge. Mark got the distinct impression the topic had already been raised and vetoed before he'd gotten there this morning.

"Okay," he said, "not the hospital. But you don't have to go with me this morning. You could just hang around here and get some more rest." He'd thrown the 'more' in there as a hypothetical; it didn't really look like the man had gotten any so far at all.

But still stubborn, it appeared. The annoyed look was hardening into something more like irritation. Mark caught a subtle shake of Hardcastle's head; this must have been on the agenda earlier, too.

"Listen," Westerfield said. He took a slow, deep breath. He appeared to be summoning deep reserves of patience that he didn't usually have to call on. "You don't know what either of these guys looks like. Besides, neither one of them is likely to trust another stranger at this point."

"Yeah, I suppose." Mark gave in with a nod, taking down a plate for himself and scraping the last of the eggs out of the pan. "But we'll take the truck." He glanced at the judge. "Okay? Easier to get in and out of. You weren't planning on going anywhere this morning, were you?" he asked pointedly.

"Nah," Hardcastle smiled thinly. "I do my best work on the phone."

"No calls from Frank yet?"

"It's only been about sixteen hours, kiddo. When did you develop such confidence in the LAPD?"

"You never know, every once in a while things work the way they should." He put the plate on the table and sat down. "I'll call back here," he added flatly, "every couple of hours, just in case he comes up with something important."

"I'll take notes. I promise." The judge was grinning, though it had an odd edge to it.

Westerfield had stopped even pretending to eat. He was studying the exchange. He finally frowned at Mark and said, "You could always just come right out and say it—'Stay put, I don't want you heading out solo on this.'" Both men shot him nearly matching looks of aggravation.

"Just a thought." The doctor shook his head. "Never mind."

00000

As a compromise, their first stop _was_ St. Mary's—in part so that Westerfield could have his dressing changed, but officially so that he could spread the word, in the ER and up on the psychiatric ward, that he should be notified if Louie Preta showed up.

"You've taken care of him quite a bit?" Mark asked, as they walked back to the truck slowly.

"Yeah," Westerfield nodded, "for years now."

"Is he dangerous?"

"Oh," the doctor appeared to ponder that for a moment, "he's delusional sometimes. Might be combative once in a while, mostly when he gets frightened, but most of the time he's manageable. It'd be better if he'd take his meds." Westerfield turned his head to study the younger man. "Why?"

"Ah, I thought maybe . . ."

"What?"

"Oh, seems like you might be the kind of person who might cover for someone."

"You mean if Louie had taken a shot at me?" Westerfield looked surprised. "Well he didn't. That much I'm pretty sure of."

Then he appeared to turn inward, as though he was thinking through the reasoning for something he already knew the answer to.

"But, yeah," he finally said, "if he had done it, I'd sure as hell hate for the police to try and arrest him. They'd wind up killing him. He's big, and he's not very coherent when he gets scared, which is just about anytime someone in a uniform shouts at him. It'd be signing his death warrant to send the cops after him as a _suspect_."

Mark studied him, trying to figure out if he'd heard the whole truth, or only what he was supposed to know. He finally wagered another guess.

"It happened kinda fast, huh? You probably didn't even realize you'd been shot at first."

The glance he got from the older man was almost startled.

McCormick nodded at this. "Yeah, feels like being punched. Takes a minute to sort things out . . . and there were two guys right there; one of them was Louie. He's the one you got the better look at. He's big, and he was standing right next to you."

Westerfield frowned, but voiced no objection. "Not quite in front, just a little to the left."

"Did you even see the other guy holding a gun? Did you see him at all before Louie moved in?"

The silence was pretty profound. Mark sighed.

"There was a witness," the doctor said firmly. "That detective, Mawson, he said there was someone who _told_ them Louie intervened."

"Yeah," Mark replied quietly. "But that'll be somebody from the neighborhood, maybe someone who knows him, a friend, someone who wanted to keep him out of trouble."

"He doesn't make friends too easily," Westerfield said dryly, but there was an unexpectedly anxious edge to it and he finally went on, in a softer, less assured tone, "Could I have put together that much gestalt? There was another guy. Really. Besides, if Louie had wanted me dead, I'd be dead. He was pretty damn close to me when the gun went off." He frowned again, apparently aware of how that had sounded.

"No," he added definitively. "Not a chance." He shook his head as he reached for the handle of the truck. "Not Louie."

00000

It was between meals at the mission, and the stout, gray-haired woman who seemed to be in charge came down on them with a look of amazed delight, rapidly tempered by concern.

"Doctor, I heard, but my goodness, from what they said I hardly expected you'd be up and about. You look—"

She cut off whatever judgment she'd been about to voice and replaced it with a welcoming smile and a hand on the man's good elbow, to escort him to a seat at one of the tables. Mark followed behind, keeping his 'I told you so' to himself as well.

Westerfield made quick introductions. The woman was Helen Walterman. No, she hadn't seen John Doe. No one had seen him the day before, after the incident, either.

"Maurice came in this morning—you know Maurice? He said he'd seen Louie over by the food depository. Said he was in a bad way. I called the number that the police left us—talked to a nice officer, but Maurice said it had been pretty early in the morning when he'd seen him."

"Did you call the other number?" Mark asked quietly. "The one the doc left."

She pulled a scrap of paper out of her apron pocket and studied it briefly before holding it out. "This one?"

Mark nodded.

"Yes, I got an answering machine but I thought I might have misdialed, or someone wrote it down wrong. It wasn't _yours_." She looked back down at Westerfield.

"What time was that?"

"About an hour ago."

Mark grimaced. "Not twenty minutes after we'd left."

Westerfield looked up, caught his eye and said, "Might have stepped out for a bit. It's a beautiful day."

"Hah," Mark said with just a tinge of bitterness. "Blues skies and nice views of the ocean are not what get that man's blood pumping. Not when the damn game's afoot." He shot a brief look and an apologetic smile at the mission lady. "Sorry . . . Do you have a phone I might use?"

She pointed silently toward a hallway, leading to the back. "Second room on the right."

McCormick gave a quick, thin smile and headed that way. The room was small, and the phone was ancient and rotary. He dialed the estate slowly, though not very patiently. Five rings and then the answering machine clicked in. He heard Hardcastle's voice tell him what he already knew. '_. . . not home right now, you can leave a message after the—'_

He hung up abruptly. He would have eventually regretted the message he wanted to leave. He perched there, hip hitched on the edge of desk, fuming. A moment or two of that and he reached for the phone again, dialing a nearly equally familiar number, though he wasn't sure if he'd reach the party in question on a Saturday morning at the office.

This time there was a live human being on the other end but he barely got a 'Hello' out before Mark interjected—

"_Dammit_, Frank, he's gone off, hell knows where and—"

"Who?"

Mark pulled up short for a second, and then said, "Hardcase, who else?"

"Oh, jeez, Mark, you had me worried for a sec. Thought you meant Westerfield." There were some sounds of motion, someone talking in the background, he couldn't make out the words but the _tone_ was awfully familiar, and Frank said, "You wanna talk to him?" thought it wasn't entirely clear if he was addressing Mark or the person in his office.

"He's there, huh?" McCormick muttered. "Figures."

"Yeah, well, he wanted me to check on some things, and the list was so long I told him to come down here and do it himself. And, hey, we got a call from the mission; a lady there says one of the other clients spotted Louie earlier this morning. I sent a squad around to the place but he'd taken off again. Like chasing smoke."

"Yeah, we're over at the mission now." Mark sighed wearily. "We'll have a look around, but . . ."

"Sure you don't want to talk to—"

"Nah, tell him we'll see him later."

He heard Frank's good-bye and something that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle in the background. He was fair-to-middling sure that Hardcastle hadn't _planned_ to yank his chain, but the timing must have entertained the hell out of him. He hung the phone up and sat there for a moment, feeling slightly angry. Then he shoved that aside.

_He's a competent adult. An ex-cop._ _He wouldn't do anything stupid._

He couldn't help it. The worry was still there. He'd seen what Dr. Henry's drug could do, the crippling memory loss that came from only a brief moment's exposure. He got up slowly, shook his head, and tried to rearrange his face in an expression that wouldn't lend itself to too much analysis from Westerfield.

He stepped out into the hallway and from there back to the front room. Mrs. Walterman was sitting alone at the table near the door. He blinked once, looked around, and closed the space between him and the empty seat next to her in a few steps. This time he knew better than to panic straight out.

"Bathroom, right?" He smiled thinly.

The woman shook her head nervously and pointed toward the front door. "I told him maybe he should wait for you, but I think he saw—"

What he might or might not have seen was lost. Mark had already spun on one heel and was through the door, standing in the bright morning light, breathless and squinting. A quick and anxious survey of the street showed him nothing, no hint of which direction the man might have taken.

'_Ought to be able to outrun him_.' Mark recalled Hardcastle's words with a sickening thud.

_Not if you don't know which way he went._

He stood there for only a moment more, in frozen indecision, his mind still ticking over the possibilities. The man was on foot—cabs weren't all that common in this part of town _and, besides, he was a competent adult, a psychiatrist— he wouldn't just duck out on you._

Mark took a deep breath and got his bearings. The lady inside said she thought he _saw_ something. The only somethings worth running out the door after would be Doe, or Louie.

To the left was a street corner. Half a block down to the right, two storefronts past the mission, there was an alley. Mark made his decision almost subconsciously, and turned right. As he approached the break between the buildings, he heard a voice, not Westerfield's, but one that was deeper, more guttural—anxious but not particularly angry.

". . . couldn't let'em frag ya, Capt'n. Just couldn't. You my ticket home and all. Owed ya. Shoulda rung his neck but I let him hightail it. I shoulda—"

"You did okay, Preet, you did just fine."

McCormick let out a nearly silent breath of relief. The calm voice of reason was Westerfield's and he sounded like things were under control. _Of course he pretty much always sounds that way._ He edged in as close as he could to the alleyway without showing himself

"But you should let me bring you in—"

"Don't need no R&R," the other voice had risen a notch in belligerence. "Doin' fine. Just fine."

He was close enough to hear Westerfield's quiet sigh. "You back to drinking?"

"Some . . . just a little." The other man had gone sly, maybe a bit embarrassed, but the slurring was noticeable.

"And the cops—"

"No cops, uh-uh. None of that shit. Not gonna let them touch me—" The anger was abrupt and unexpected.

"They just want to ask you some questions . . . about what you saw. You just tell them like you told me."

It was hard to make out the last bit, under the other man's steady, anxious cussing. Mark was moving forward even before he heard the sudden, hard thud of something hitting metal.

They were standing halfway down the alley, with Westerfield half-leaning against the wall, and the other man, half a head taller at least, in front of him. Both looked over sharply as McCormick rounded the corner. The taller one had a raft of hair—long, unkempt—and a beard. He was burly under a battered fatigue jacket.

Mark had him pegged at 250 pounds, and it really didn't matter how much of that was muscle if he got mad enough.But Westerfield, within an arm's reach of the guy, looked more surprised than worried, and the noise had obviously come from Preta dropping one ham-like fist on the lid of the dumpster that was next to them.

Now he was backing off, two steps slowly, eyes on Mark the whole time.

"No cops," he muttered again, this time low, nearly a growl. Then he turned and moved down the alley with surprising speed. He was around the back end and out of sight a moment later.

Westerfield slumped a little. Now that Preta was gone, his bland, non-judgmental expression had taken on a shade of real concern, but he also looked a little peeved.

"Did it sound like I needed rescuing?"

Mark shrugged nervously but didn't back down. "Guess it's one of those things I'd rather do _before_ it's obvious."

This got him a half-hearted, possibly embarrassed smile. "You have a point there." He sighed regretfully. "I suppose the productivity of that session was dropping off pretty rapidly. I usually draw the line when they start pounding on things."

"So this is the guy you're _sure_ didn't shoot you?"

"Very sure," Westerfield said. He took a step forward and, without the wall for support, swayed just slightly. He shook his head and muttered "Too damn much adrenalin. And never let them get you backed up against a wall."

"Yeah, tell me about it." Mark got him under the good arm. "I think we'll take a break."

"Okay." The older man frowned. "I really _am_ off my game today." Then he said, "But you can see what I mean, if the cops went after him. And this is one of his better days. Really. He's oriented. He's in the here and now. He's pretty focused."

"A good day, huh? Now I know why you're always telling me I'm not crazy. You've got _standards_."

They were back out to the sidewalk. Mark paused their march for a moment.

"I still gotta call it in . . . to Frank at least." He looked over his shoulder to the now-empty alleyway, then back at the still-frowning psychiatrist. "Don't worry. He'll have to notify dispatch, then they'll send someone 'round. Louie was moving pretty fast. He'll be long gone by then. Like chasing smoke."

00000

He'd gotten the doc settled in the truck, then went back and offered reassurances to Mrs. Walterman and borrowed her phone again. This second call to Frank was even briefer, and he carefully avoided the specifics of how Westerfield had encountered Louie. It helped that Frank didn't really want to chat after getting the bare bones of it.

Mark heard Hardcastle in the background, peppering Harper with questions even before he'd hung up the phone. Now there was a guy who'd be looking a little more closely at the details. McCormick sighed as he recradled the receiver.

The lunch line was beginning to form as he made his way out the door. Ms. Walterman was too busy to give him more than a nod.

He hoped his nod back was an unspoken reminder for her to keep the phone number handy in case Doe showed up. He hoped John Doe was an average-sized guy who wasn't prone to military flashbacks. He hoped the judge had made some amazing discoveries that would distract him from extracting a point-by-point recital of the morning's events.

He trudged back to the truck.

00000

Mark shot a quick glance at the man on the passenger side as they pulled into the back drive at the estate. They'd both caught sight of the empty spot where the 'Vette was usually parked in the garage. Westerfield's eyebrows had gone up one notch, though it appeared more surmise than shock.

"He's with Lieutenant Harper," Mark said flatly. "Frank _invited_ him down there. Must've been right after we left." He tried not to make it sound like he was apologizing for the man; he couldn't really explain why he'd need to do that anyway.

The doc nodded as he climbed down slowly out of the cab. McCormick looked at him appraisingly.

"You can handle the stairs, right?" he asked, pointing to the half-flight that led along the side of the garage to the kitchen door.

Another nod, this one looked wearier. Mark suddenly felt like he wasn't the only one not looking forward to a detailed analysis of the morning's events.

"The lieutenant will call us, won't he?" Westerfield asked. "I mean if his men locate Louie."

"Probably."

"Good," the older man said quietly. "I'd like to be there if they're going to question him."

"Why?" Mark asked. He realized it had come out a little abruptly.

The psychiatrist didn't look put out, though. He seemed to be giving the simple question some thought.

"Well, might help if there's somebody there who gets the context. Help the police to understand. Louie gets some pretty impressive episodes of 'flight of ideas', a bit manic sometimes."

Mark let him precede up the steps, staying just behind with a ready hand. He left the explanation undisputed, though it sounded incomplete.

They were barely in the kitchen. McCormick had only a moment to glance at the note sitting on the table. He pocketed it, then pulled a chair out for Westerfield and turned to fetch him a glass of water. He was at the sink when he heard the front door being opened and a gruff greeting.

"Back here," Mark hollered.

A moment later the judge himself appeared, in the doorway of the kitchen, bearing a pizza box and an expression of barely-contained curiosity.

"Ah, more one-handed food," Westerfield smiled wanly.

They didn't bother moving into the dining room. Mark got out paper plates and napkins and they divvied it up right there in the kitchen.

But once they'd gotten settled at the table, Hardcastle's simple "Well?" couldn't be put off any longer.

McCormick let Westerfield tell the story. He was surprised at how rational it sounded, from the psychiatrist's point of view. He'd seen Louie Preta walking by, shoulders slouched, eyes down. The man had obviously not seen him. He didn't appear agitated, but there was no way to tell from his posture how much the preceding day's events had disturbed him.

"But my _feeling_—" Westerfield looked up sharply from that, interrupting himself. "You know a lot of it is instinct really. There are damn few objective findings in my line of work." This got him a surprisingly understanding nod from the judge.

The doc accepted this with a quick duck of his own head. "I just felt like I could approach him. _Me_ . . . he knows me. And, anyway," he looked a bit more rueful, "you'd stepped into the back, Mark. If I'd waited, if he'd gotten further down the street, gotten out of sight, if we'd both gone charging out of there after him . . . "

He let all the other possibilities set there for a moment and then finally added a sincere-sounding, all-purpose 'sorry,' directed at the younger man.

Hardcastle said nothing right off the bat. He merely sat there for a moment, contemplating the piece of pizza he wasn't eating and probably assembling a pretty accurate impression of the few moments after Mark had realized the doc was missing. He finally took a deep breath and cocked his head.

"So, did you get anything useful out of him?"

Westerfield frowned. McCormick watched this part pretty closely. The hesitation was subtle, maybe it meant nothing at all—'_there are damn few objective findings . . .'_

Mark had a sudden and profound empathy for _that_ statement, but his instinct was that he'd arrived too late for the most important part of this morning's exchange between the doctor and his uncooperative patient. Of course there was no way for Westerfield to be sure of just _when_ he'd gotten there, after all, he'd been out of sight around the corner of the building until the very end.

He had a moment of guilty inspiration and said, "Tell him, Doc," with insistent certainty.

Westerfield glanced over at him, looking slightly startled. Then his frown was back, and deeper, as though he was fighting the habit of a lifetime's practice of reticence.

Then he let it out, with a sudden exhalation. "Not all that much, really. Louie didn't recognize the man—not by name _or_ sight—and that would probably mean he wasn't from the neighborhood. I asked him about John Doe, too. He said he only met him one time, at the mission, right before Doe went into St. Mary's. He said something odd about that."

The other two men waited, more or less patiently, as Westerfield pinched the bridge of his nose, as though he was trying to get that bit exactly right.

"He said, 'He's the type.'"

"What type?" Hardcastle asked, not quite so patiently. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Not sure. I would have gotten back to it, but Louie had moved on. He does that. Sometimes he's hard to redirect."

"That 'flight of ideas' thing?" Mark asked quietly.

"Yeah. Always a little. I usually get more out of him that most people can. He'll listen to me some of the time. I can focus him some. _That's_ why I said it'd be a good thing if I was there, if he gets picked up by the police . . . if he lets them pick him up." The doctor lifted his good shoulder, as if to relieve a strain, then let it sink back down again.

"And then," Westerfield said, "he got himself worked up, and he did something that, well, might've sounded alarming."

"He whacked the dumpster," McCormick added an aside, in answer to the judge's look of puzzlement. "I came hustling around the corner to see if things were under control and Louie ran off"

"They _were_ under control," The doctor protested mildly, and then, at Hardcastle's look of disbelief, he added a more rueful, "Well, they _mostly _were."

Mark thought the doc had glossed over a few points, but the story basically stood as an accurate account. He made no comment.

"So, now what?" Westerfield finally added. There was a weary edge to his tone.

"Well," Hardcastle raised an eyebrow, "you look like you could use a rest, maybe another pain pill. The mission will call us if Doe shows up, and Frank'll let us know if they find Louie."

The doc made a face. "The pills," he said with a touch of disgust, "are _why_ I need a nap."

Mark eased back from the table. "Like I said, first day after is the worst. It'll get better."

"Uh-huh." Westerfield stood slowly, "but you'll wake me up if anything happens, right?"

Both men smiled reassuringly in a suspiciously similar manner. Their guest just shook his head and headed for the doorway without trying for a firmer promise.

The judge's expression hardened into something more interrogatory a moment after the other man had departed, and the question came almost before they heard the first footfall on the stairs.

"What the hell happened out there?"

McCormick winced slightly. He had a few years of practiced reticence of his own to deal with, but he almost immediately realized that full disclosure was the only way to go on this one. He took a deep breath.

"I only misplaced him for a minute or two, ya know," he said defensively. "It was while I was on the phone to Frank."

"That first call, huh?" Hardcastle made a face. "You saw I'd left you a note, by the way—"

"Yeah," Mark grudged, feeling in his pocket for it, "but the note was here and I was there. How the hell was I supposed to know you were behaving yourself?"

"Because I _said _I would." The older man's expression had evened out, but still looked stern.

Mark sat quietly for a moment before he said, "That hasn't always been enough." He almost hadn't said it, but in the end it slipped out, little more than a mutter.

"It's been three _years_. How long before you trust me on this one again, kiddo?"

He'd been looking down at the floor, and the quietness of the older man's response took him by surprise. He jerked his chin up. He supposed it might partly have been company manners—mostly not wanting the company to feel he had to come back down and mediate—but the look of disappointment on Hardcastle's face was another matter altogether. Mark tried to recapture the annoyance he'd been working with earlier that morning.

"Might help," he finally said, "if you weren't so damn _glib_ about it. I shouldn't be the only one who takes that damn stuff seriously."

He stopped there, determined not to play the 'I almost died' card, and most certainly not the one that trumped even that.

"'Glib', huh?" Again the mildness was astonishing; it was as if he'd seen the hand that Mark was holding. Hardcastle did little more than shake his head. "Okay, so you're saying it's not enough that I _do_ the right thing; I've got to be _sincere_ about it, too?"

Somehow, he managed to say all of it without a hint of a grumble, and no detectable irony. It was a pretty damn effective display of sincerity.

Mark cracked first. It was only a smile, but it slipped precariously into a grin a half second after Hardcastle started grinning, too.

"Yeah," McCormick stifled a laugh and still kept his voice down. "That's about it . . . and no chortling with Frank about how flipped out I got, just because you didn't pick up the phone when I called here—"

"I didn't _chortle_**"**

Mark looked disbelieving.

"Well," the judge conceded, "might've been one quick chort—but I _had_ left a damn note."

There was a brief conceding shrug from McCormick. That was as much as he was going to give and Hardcastle seemed to settle for it.

"So, what _did_ happen out there?" he repeated.

Mark gave that a careful frown, then picked up the story from where he'd left off.

"I came out from using the phone; he was gone. The lady said he'd seen something. I didn't hang around to discuss it; I tore out of there. I guess I picked the right direction. I heard a voice, Louie's, around the corner in an alley. I missed the first part—the part he told you about—but when I got there the guy sounded pretty excited."

"But coherent?"

"Yeah," Mark answered after a quick moment's thought, "I'd say so. But what he said sounded like he was still in the military. He called Westerfield 'Captain', and he said he couldn't let him get 'fragged'." Mark frowned. "You know what that means, right?"

"Yeah," Hardcastle replied grimly, "troops murdering their own officer, making it look like a combat death."

Mark nodded. "I heard guys talk about it, in Quentin . . . anyway, he said he couldn't let that happen, and that the doc was his 'ticket home'."

"But this Louie guy was pounding the dumpster, you said? Sounds kinda flakey."

"Well, the doc was trying to settle him down, get him to check into a facility, I think. But the pounding didn't come until after that. Louie was talking about 'R&R'," Mark conceded, "but after I stepped in and he ran off, the doc said he'd actually been making a fair amount of sense."

"Yeah," Hardcastle scratched his forehead. "But is it the metaphorical kind, or the regular kind?"

Mark hesitated a moment, wondering if he should raise the other issue. The judge looked up at him abruptly. He seemed to sense the unspoken evasion.

"What else?"

"Oh," McCormick shrugged, trying not to imply too much significance, "I asked Westerfield this morning if Louie was dangerous—I didn't get an unqualified 'no' on that, by the way—and then I asked him if Louie might've have actually been the shooter."

Hardcastle nodded once, as if the thought had also occurred to him.

"He didn't give me a quick 'no' on that one, either. I don't think he was necessarily covering for Louie, more like he honestly wasn't sure. But later on, after he talked to the guy, he _was_." Mark shook his head worriedly. "It might be that he's going with his instincts on this, too, and I'd sure like to know what he's basing it on."

Hardcastle appeared to be pondering, maybe even still back at the possible metaphor. He finally sighed once and said, "You should just go ahead and ask him."

"Me?" Mark tried not to look as surprised as he felt. "I dunno, I was kinda hoping you would." He paused for a moment and then said, "You guys are more like _friends_, you know?"

It was Hardcastle's turn to look surprised. "Well, what the hell are you, then?"

"Well . . ." McCormick frowned, "friends, I guess. But it's different. Anyway, I already asked, and it didn't get me very far. Maybe he'll listen to you."

"Hell," the judge grumbled, "he listens to everybody; it's getting him to _answer_ that's the problem."

Mark nodded glumly, still frowning. "Hey," he finally added, "what'd _you_ do this morning. Besides behave."

Hardcastle's slight grin didn't seem forced.

"Tidied up," he said with an air of unexpected cheerfulness. "Made sure all the loose ends were still tucked in."

"And are they?"

"Yeah, either tucked in or awaiting trial. All the folks in the People's Freedom Army got nice long sentences. The Fringe Wacko Task Force says they don't have any close associates—they were a real splinter faction. The threat assessment on Dr. Henry's drug is officially low."

Mark's frown had turned dubious.

"Well," the judge conceded, "it probably helps that now everyone who knows about it also knows that if you handle it without high-level hazmat gear, you're liable to wind up forgetting why you wanted to use the stuff in the first place."

McCormick nodded to that. "What about Doe? Anything?"

"Nothing. But all Frank has to work with is a couple of descriptions. There's nobody reported missing who's a likely match, and, really, if this guy had taken a hit from Henry's drug that was heavy enough to make him forget his _name_, well, he probably would've died, the way Henry's lab technician did."

"I suppose."

"But Louie met him, huh?" Hardcastle smiled speculatively. "Small world."

"We gotta find him. He's the key."

"Yeah," the judge nodded, "I'd say so."

"We aren't going to just sit here and wait for someone to call, are we?" Mark glanced down at his watch, all too aware that he'd already burned up a considerable number of hours with very little to show for it.

"Well," Hardcastle scratched his forehead again, "_you_ are. I mean, what if Doe shows up at the mission? Somebody's got to wait here for the phone to ring. And Phil really did look about done in. No sense you and him running around without something solid to go on."

"And what are _you_ going to do?" McCormick asked suspiciously.

"Don't worry. I'll behave. I'll go back over by Frank, see what kind luck his guys are having. Maybe check on a few more things myself."

"What kind of 'things'?" Mark tried to keep the question low-key.

Hardcastle grimaced. "Okay, that's enough. You and the doc were out there conferencing in an alley with a guy who still thinks it's 1968. All I'm going to be risking is a little eye-strain. You clear on that now?"

Mark hesitated a moment, then nodded sullenly.

"Good." The judge was on his feet, checking his own watch. "Call me if you head out again. I'll be in Frank's office. And I'll call _you_ if I'm going to be anywhere else."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Mark sat in the den, contemplating the silence in the wake of Hardcastle's departure. The truth was, he felt a bit at ends, _unanchored_. It might have been that he wasn't used to just sitting and waiting anymore, but he really had no choice. He couldn't even go out and mess with the hedges; he didn't want to be where he wouldn't hear if the phone rang.

He even regretted abandoning his briefcase, and the omnipresent stack of paper-work back at the office, with their hasty departure the day before. He wondered exactly what further angles Hardcase was pursuing, and he decided he didn't very much like his theory about that. After all, if they couldn't ID either the shooter or John Doe—and Louie was still in the wind—that left only Westerfield as a possible starting point for further inquiry.

McCormick was beginning to regret having been so forthcoming with what he'd overheard in the alley—after all, could anything Louie said be taken at face value? He got to his feet, looked out the window at nothing in particular, then went back to studying the phone for a while, willing it to ring.

And it rang.

He jumped, and lunged for it, then paused with his hand on the receiver, and it still sitting in the cradle. Chances were, he assured himself, that it was just the judge, having arrived at his destination and being annoyingly punctilious about it. He held his place for another ring, being damned if he was going to be caught _pouncing_ on it.

Then he picked it up, slowly, carefully, and said 'hello' without any audible eagerness.

The person at the other end said, "Oh," sounding a bit puzzled, and then, apparently got his bearings and added, "Ah . . . is Dr. Westerfield there?"

Mark heard noises in the background, beeps, and voices and general sounds of medical bustle. "Yeah," he replied, "I can get him, just a sec."

He put the phone down gently on the desk and headed for the stairs, trying not to get his hopes up. It might only be someone checking up on how the patient was doing, maybe a friend of the doc's. He'd only made it halfway up the steps when he saw Westerfield at the top, looking frowzy and half-awake, but obviously having heard the phone.

"For you," Mark said. "The hospital, I think. Careful on the stairs."

Westerfield came down, slowly but steadily enough. He pulled he phone to the edge of the desk and sat down in a chair before saying, "Hello?" and then after a pause. "Yeah, fine, Hal. Sorry I missed you this morning . . . no, really, just fine."

Mark hitched one hip on the desk and shook his head. But the tone of the next word out of Westerfield's mouth brought him back to full attention.

"When?" the doc asked, now appearing fully alert. And then, quickly, "Is he still there?"

Mark tried to get his attention, pointing to the speaker button on the phone. He was ignored.

"No," Westerfield said firmly, though it was obvious that he was still speaking to the man on the other end of the line. "Not that. I can be over there in twenty minutes," he finally looked up a Mark, then cast a quick glance through the window in the direction of the Coyote, "maybe fifteen. You think you can hang onto him that long?"

The answer must have been an affirmative. Westerfield looked pleased and said good-bye quickly. The phone was hung up a second later and he was edging forward in his seat, working on getting upright almost immediately.

"Who? What?" Mark asked.

"Louie, in the ER, asking for me. He didn't want to register."

"Damn." Mark reached for the phone again.

"Wait a sec." Westerfield intercepted his hand. "Who are you calling?"

"The police. Harper."

The doc shook his head hastily. "No. You call the lieutenant and he'll beat us there—him and at least a couple of uniform guys. Louie will bolt again _and_ he'll probably figure I tipped them off. There'll be some major trust issues if I do something like that."

"But—"

"_Major_ issues . . . he won't let me get close to him again. Seriously."

Mark knew he looked unconvinced and more than a little worried.

Westerfield raised his good hand, placatingly. "We're meeting him at the ER. It's well-lit, very safe. I'm amazed he showed up there. He must be in fairly decent shape. He _wants_ to see me. That's a helluva breakthrough."

"Either that or he's desperate," Mark muttered. "It might be that. He might be running scared and you're the only person he trusts."

"All the more reason not to violate that trust," the psychiatrist said quietly. "I owe him. You understand that, don't you?"

Mark looked wistfully at the telephone, thinking about trust, and finally said, "Yeah," but it was painfully reluctant.

"And you have to get me there in fifteen minutes," Westerfield said encouragingly, already moving for the door. "I figured you could do that."

"Well, _maybe_," McCormick said glumly, "but we're taking the truck, okay?" He cast one more regretful look back at the phone, and then headed after him out the door.

00000

It took closer to twenty minutes, but whether that was because he'd been bucking Saturday traffic or a guilty conscience, McCormick couldn't rightly say. Through all of it, Westerfield had sat bolt upright on the passenger side, maybe even leaning forwards a bit, in silent encouragement. All trace of weariness had departed. It reminded Mark, more than a little, of Hardcastle in full view halloo, with the quarry in sight.

The man barely waited for the truck to come to a full stop before he was reaching across with his good hand to open the door. Mark shook his head, then climbed out on his own side and hustled around the vehicle to catch up to him.

"Once we're in there, once you've had a chance to talk to him, _then_ can I call Frank?"

Westerfield cast him a curious sideward glance but said nothing as he tackled the stairs briskly. Mark took that as a qualified 'yes'. He pushed his concerns aside and even made it to the door first, pulling it open and holding it.

The waiting area was nearly full. Mark scanned it briefly, then realized Westerfield was getting a signal from the registrar. She pointed to her right. Mark saw him now, sitting off in a corner, next to a potted plant. He looked less intimidating, and more shabby, hunched forward in a chair.

He had that little section all to himself, despite the general crowdedness. The 'I'm not entirely sane' vibes were obvious, Mark supposed, and they created a buffer zone. He'd known guys like that in the joint, always with a little space to themselves.

Westerfield headed straight for him, slipping past the invisible barrier without any apparent hesitance, snagging a chair and setting it down across from the other man. Mark wondered for a moment if he was supposed to give them some privacy, but then decided somebody had to be the responsible party. He moved in and took a place, casually leaning up against the wall, but within a quick step and an arm's reach of the two of them.

Louie was still leaning forward and looking down. He hadn't reacted to the doc, now seated foursquare in front of him, and not even to McCormick's fairly overt intrusion. Westerfield shot a quick, sharp glance up at Mark, but said nothing to him. Then his attention was redirected, focused entirely on the man across from him.

"Hey, Preet, they said you wanted to talk to me?"

A little rocking motion. It might have been a nod, but the meaning wasn't clear. Westerfield said nothing more for a moment, until the silence seemed stretched to the breaking point.

Louie finally muttered a 'yeah', very soft. He sounded worried, not threatening. Mark eased back a little, trying to keep his stance loose. Westerfield crossed his legs, and shifted a little, as though he was settling in for however long a wait this would require. Louie finally lifted his gaze, though not his whole face.

"They're after me," he said, a bit harsher but still quiet.

Another pause, no further information followed. Westerfield finally asked "Who is?"

Louie's eyes shifted left and right, quick darting movements. He fastened for a moment on McCormick, then away. He breathing was a little faster.

"_Them_."

"The police?"

A nod, furtive, almost stealthy, as though Louie wasn't even sure if that much was true.

"They just want to ask you what you saw," Westerfield said patiently. "What happened yesterday."

The rocking was back, more pronounced now. _He's ticking_. McCormick didn't move closer, but he wondered what the countdown was leading to, and how much warning he'd have, if any. Mark was almost startled when the doc started talking again.

"You could just tell me, instead." It was calm and considered and Louie seemed to have heard.

"I don't know nothing; I don't know who the guy was."

"And Doe," Westerfield persisted, "you said something this morning. You said he was 'the type'."

Louie frowned.

"What did you mean? What type were you talking about?"

It might have been that Louie was having trouble remembering, but it looked like he was giving it a try. After another silent moment he offered up a knowing smile and said, "Aww, you know, _that_ type."

McCormick wasn't sure where his own flash of insight had come from. It was there for only a split-second before he blurted it out.

"Doe's a fake."

Louie said nothing, but his smile, still with an edge of worry, broadened slightly. Westerfield looked momentarily startled, and then frowned slightly as though he was considering it.

"That's . . . an interesting assessment, Louie." The frown hadn't cleared yet, but Mark noticed the doc wasn't raising any counter-arguments. He finally added, "Care to tell me how you know?"

"I saw him, saw him making a phone call. If'n he don't know anything, then who's he know to call?"

"Maybe a number they gave him while he was here?" the doc suggested cautiously.

"Uh-uh, uh-uh." The rocking was back, but it seemed more excitement that nervousness, now. "_Before_, that's when I saw him."

Westerfield's smile dawned slowly. It was small but very satisfied.

"Preet, I owe you twice now."

Louie flashed a grin. "Maybe we're even." But the expression didn't hold. The shadow of fear was back a moment later.

"Listen," the psychiatrist's voice dropped down, as if he was speaking in confidence, "I can get you set up in there." He hooked his left thumb back, in the direction of the registrar's counter and the door to the inner sanctum of the ER. "Doc Poole is on today; you know him, right? He's a good guy. We'll get you in. Safe in there."

Mark watched the other man's tension rising. There was a ripple of muscle in Louie's jaw, and he straightened suddenly, pushing the chair back hard against the wall. The sharp, scraping sound had attracted some momentary attention from the person sitting in registration. She frowned and reached for a phone.

Men in uniforms would arrive momentarily, of that McCormick was almost certain. There would be confusion, and quite possibly a tussle, and there was Westerfield still sitting, slightly off-balance, in what would be the middle of it, looking like he still thought they could talk things over.

"Doc," Mark started, reaching for the man's good arm and trying not to sound too urgent. A hospital security guard had now made an appearance. The registrar was motioning in their direction and the guard was frowning. Mark tugged a little and repeated himself more urgently. "_Doc._"

Louie stumbled backwards slightly, knocking the chair off to the side. He caught himself with one hand against the wall, and then made a break for it, past a row of waiting patients and through a crowd that parted by the door.

Westerfield was half up. He looked over his shoulder, taking in the guard, the anxiously staring others, and the last glimpse of Louie through the glass, as he fled across the parking lot.

"_Damn_."

He shook himself free of the support. The security guard was moving towards them, looking pleased that his problem had apparently decamped. "Everything okay here, Doc?"

Mark watched Westerfield bite down hard on the answer to that question, as he visibly composed his face, and then apparently his answer, into something more civil than what he was thinking.

"Yeah, Marty," he finally exhaled. "Fine."

The guard nodded once quickly, apparently glad to have been of service, and was off. McCormick stood there for a moment, ready to offer further support, which looked like it might be necessary.

"We could—"

Westerfield waved that away impatiently. "Too late, he'll be long gone by now. He knows a lot of places to hide." He cocked his head with a rueful and unexpected smile. "Want to call Hardcastle now?"

Mark grimaced and shook his head, then gestured the other man toward the door.

"No rush, I suppose," the doc agreed. "Anyway, I'll talk to him. It was my idea."

"Nah, I'll do it. We're great believers in personal responsibility over at Gulls Way," he said with some chagrin. "God, I hate it when he gets to say 'I told you so.'"

Westerfield nodded in what appeared to be all-purpose sympathy. He said nothing more until they were outside, blinking in the afternoon sunlight. Then he paused, turning sideways. Mark pulled up short, wondering briefly if the man was going to head back inside, maybe seeking out the relative safety of a hospital bed. Instead he was looking at Mark steadily, with a questioning expression.

"How'd you figure it out?" he asked curiously.

"What?"

"What Louie meant," the doc said, with just a hint of impatience, "about Doe faking it."

"Oh," Mark hesitated, then back-tracked. "The phone call?" he finally offered.

"_No_," Westerfield shook his head, "you knew what he meant before he explained it _and_ you believed him right away. How come?"

McCormick frowned. It was really two questions, and the understanding part was harder to explain. He finally settled for a general theory.

"You know it's pretty easy, Doc. The faking it, I mean. I've seen it done. _I've_ done it."

"In prison?"

"Hell, no," Mark said sharply. "In prison they really make it not worth your while to do that. No, the last thing you want to do there is let on that you're crazy, even if it's _true_."

Westerfield didn't argue with the terminology or the point; he just stood there, apparently waiting for the rest of the story.

Mark sighed. "Okay, I talked my way into a locked ward one time. It was one of Hardcastle's cases. We needed some information in a hurry."

"You were on parole?"

"Well," Mark shrugged, "_yeah_."

The doc puzzled through that for a moment, then said, "That's got to be some type of violation. The judge let you—"

"Oh, hell no, I didn't tell _him_. And I didn't lie. And I _did_ answer all their questions. _Really_. I can't help it if the truth sounds crazy sometimes."

The psychiatrist gave him one long, hard stare. Then there was a hint of a smile.

"I'll bet that was a very interesting intake interview."

McCormick's own smile was slightly relieved.

"Yeah, I think they finally settled on some sort of delusional disorder. Can you blame 'em?"

"I'm surprised they let you go."

Mark grinned. "They didn't. Hardcase came and sprang me."

He saw one of Westerfield's eyebrows rising in disbelief.

"Yeah, well," he added, "He's been used to my kind of crazy for a while now. Besides, you can't trim hedges in a straitjacket."

The doubtful look stayed on the other man's face as they got in the truck, but he made no further comment. In fact, a fairly pointed silence had descended on both men as they drove. Mark was starting to wonder if the personal responsibility ethic was contagious—maybe something in the water up at the estate. At any rate, Westerfield seemed to be lost in contemplation of their latest fiasco.

They were nearly home before the doc spoke again, and then it was in a tone of half-convinced justification. "We've learned something, I think."

"Yeah," Mark replied. "Doe's not what he seemed to be . . . not that he was actually seeming to be anything."

"Oh, an amnesiac is a definite _something_," Westerfield smiled. "At least a dissociative one is. Saying you don't know your name is a very public way to announce you have a problem you don't want to talk about. That's one of the reasons it's always intrigued me so much. But a real fugue patient usually plays by the rules. Louie's right, making a phone call is cheating." The doc looked more satisfied than disappointed.

They were in the drive, pulling up. All appeared quiet but the 'Vette was parked in plain view near the fountain. Mark sighed.

"We were barely gone an hour," Westerfield said glumly.

"He probably called home and got the machine then came back to check things out." Mark opened his door, and stepped out, straightening his shoulders.

The doc was still sitting there, in no apparent hurry. "We could just say we went over to the hospital," he half-muttered.

Mark gave him a sharp look. Obviously the man hadn't drunk quite enough of the water yet. He shook his head slowly. "You can _try_ that," he said, "but, believe me, it'll just prolong it. Better to just 'fess up."

Westerfield said nothing, but climbed out of the truck, leaning on the door for a moment. The judge hadn't come out onto the porch. Mark wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.

He walked around to the passenger side of the truck and said, "Come on."

Mark didn't knock—that would have been odd under most circumstances—but neither did he holler any of the usual greetings as he opened the door. If Hardcastle was in the den, he'd already noted their arrival, and it wasn't likely he'd be elsewhere.

McCormick maneuvered himself between Westerfield and the open doorway and tried to arrange his face in a not guilty expression, for what good that would do. One quick step in and . . . no one was there. The chair empty, and everything just as they'd left it. He frowned, trying to parse out the meaning of it all.

The doc sidled around him and looked equally puzzled, then said, in a practical tone, "Well, he's here somewhere."

Mark stood frozen for a moment, giving the place a hard listen.

"The basement," he said abruptly, and when the older man still looked puzzled, he added, tersely, "Well, I'd hear him if he was anywhere else. It's either the basement or out by the pool. You think he's sitting out there getting some sun?"

Westerfield shook his head.

"And he wouldn't have heard the truck if he's in the basement. Not even the door," Mark explained, heading down the hall and around the corner to the door, the other man at his heels.

His time he opened the door and hollered. "You there?"

The reply was distant, from one floor down and around a corner, but distinctly affirmative and not obviously hostile.

"What's he doing down there?" Westerfield asked curiously.

"The files," Mark said, and let that stand for an explanation. "Careful," he added, "there's no railing on the left further down."

He took the steps at less than his usual trot, partly so as not to hurry Westerfield, and partly because he still wasn't sure what sort of reception awaited him at the bottom. But the doc was right behind him and the man sitting at the table in the file room looked as though he had been genuinely immersed, with a file open in front of him and a stack to either side.

He glanced up from what he was doing, an unrevealing expression on his face, as though he was waiting for an explanation but had no intention of asking for it. Mark swallowed once, smiled, quick and thin, then started to open his mouth.

The man just behind him and to his right spoke first, and it was with a tone of bemusement. "'The _files_'?"

Mark cut a quick glance over his shoulder, then back at the room in front of him. A motley collection of cabinets lined two walls, with unfiled papers lying here and there. A shotgun was propped in one corner, and there were two mug shots thumb-tacked to a spare bit of wall by the light switch.

McCormick saw it for a moment with new eyes, the way home looks after a long vacation, when you return and find things weren't left quite as ship-shape as you remembered. And there in the middle of it, hunched over a table that was more functional than decorative, was Hardcastle.

It was increasingly evident that the man wasn't angry, not even pretending not to be angry. If there was any air about him, it could only be described as _distracted_.

"You went somewhere?" he asked.

Mark nodded. This time he noticed Westerfield was keeping his mouth shut, too, though he was sill studying the room around him with unconcealed curiosity.

"Where?" The judge finally frowned

McCormick shot a glance to the side and then answered blandly, "To the hospital."

Hardcastle sat up straighter, looking at Westerfield with a little more care.

"You hadn't called here?" Mark asked. "That's not why you came home?"

"Ah," there was another sudden shift of the judge's eyes. For a brief moment McCormick might've almost catalogued it as evasiveness. "Well," he finally eased back in the chair, "I wanted to look some stuff up." Then he frowned again, as if he'd had a chance to think through what Mark had said. "So, why were you at the hospital?" The furrows in the man's forehead looked as if they'd settled in to stay. "And how come you didn't call me?"

"I got a message here," Westerfield jumped in before Mark could arrange the facts in the least damning way. "It was from the ER. Louie showed up there asking for me. I wanted to talk to him before he got spooked off."

Hardcastle took this in without comment, then turned almost at once to Mark. "So, you didn't tell Frank, huh?"

McCormick shook his head, then lifted his gaze and fixed the older man with a look. "Louie would've spooked, too. The guy's pretty nervous. But the doc got him to sit down and talk for a few minutes."

"Anything useful _this_ time?"

"Maybe," Mark said. "He thinks Doe is a fake."

The judge harrumphed.

"He had some evidence," the younger man added. "He saw Doe making a phone call, which is a pretty neat trick for a guy who's claiming he doesn't remember anything."

The judge gave that a considering nod but then seemed to refocus on the other issue. "But you didn't call Frank _after_ you met with Louie, either, huh? Lemme guess, he bolted again. You know, we coulda grabbed him. Frank could've had the guy hauled in, material witness."

"Not a chance. Either he would have gotten away, or someone would've gotten hurt," Westerfield interjected abruptly. "He's very single-minded about getting away from things that frighten him."

The psychiatrist pulled out a chair and sat down across from Hardcastle. "Listen," he said, "it was my idea and I stick with it. I needed to talk to him and I did. I'd like to talk to him some more and that may be possible as long as he trusts me."

"But do you trust _him_?"

Westerfield sat back for a moment. He appeared to be thinking about it, but there was only a brief hesitation.

"Yes. He's not the guy who shot me."

Hardcastle took in a slow breath. "Okay," he finally said, "Louie's legit and Doe's a fake . . . and we still don't know why the shooter took a shot at you."

Mark wasn't sure if he'd really heard it or not, that slight emphasis on the word 'you' that implied more than he thought they knew.

"Just because Doe's a fake, doesn't mean somebody might not be shooting at him." He rubbed the bridge of his nose and hitched his elbow on the top of the file cabinet next to him.

Hardcastle gave that a nod, but it was Westerfield who spoke next, and it almost seemed a non sequitur.

"You have a lot of files," he observed mildly, casting a long gaze around the room again.

The judge matched it for a moment, and then finally looked down at the folder in front of him, closed it, set it on the stack to his left and said, "Yeah. Kinda sneaks up on a person, I guess."

"The lieutenant mentioned it once, right after we first met. He said you kept track of things—cases in your courtroom that hadn't gone well." Westerfield's look of astonishment was back. "I had no idea."

"Well," Hardcastle pushed the stack a bit further to the side, "it started out with those. But that's not all of it." He frowned for a moment, casting another quick glance to the cabinets, then back. "I've acquired things."

"Looks like it."

"Reference materials," Mark said suddenly, and then paused for a moment, hoping it hadn't sounded apologetic. "Stuff you can't get at the library," he added, with a slight grin.

That expression hung there for a moment. The doc, as usual, seemed to accept what he was being told without any overt judgment but McCormick still felt vaguely ill at ease. He tried to trace that to the source, and then his eyes went back to Hardcastle.

"So what were you down here checking, anyway?" He leaned forward a little, trying to get a closer look at the stack of files.

"A hunch," the judge replied cryptically, leaving Mark to wonder just who was supposed to not know any more than that.

He ventured one more query. "Any luck?"

Hardcastle was already on his feet. "Not yet," he said tersely. He spoke to McCormick but then cast another look at Westerfield and added, "Don't suppose you had 'em take another look at your shoulder while you were over there?"

"It'd only been about six hours since the last time." The doc's protest might've carried more weight if the man himself hadn't sunk down in the chair, like someone who had no immediate plans to get up.

"Come on," the judge said, offering him a hand and, Mark noted with a smile, effectively having redirected the topic of conversation.

They made their way back upstairs, Mark lingering behind for a moment, ostensibly to turn off the lights. He felt only a twinge of guilt as he stepped back over to the table and took a quick look at the stacks. He recognized a few names—mob guys, mostly, if he wasn't mistaken. There were none with whom he had any detailed familiarity. _You mean none that have personally tried to kill you._

These were the files Hardcastle had meant when he said 'I've acquired things.' Some of them were hard-won, too, the result of carefully cultivated relationships with people from both sides of the law. But what the hell that had to do with the matter at hand, McCormick had no idea.

"You coming?" the judge hollered down from the top of the stairs.

"Yeah," Mark said, as he shrugged and set the topmost file back down where he'd found it. "Right behind you." And he headed up the steps.

00000

The judge suggested food, and, though no one was particularly hungry, Mark made some one-handed sandwiches. It was in the middle of their unenthusiastic kitchen-supper, that the phone rang again.

Hardcastle leaned over and snagged it first, beating McCormick by half a ring. All the younger man got out of it was the identity of the caller.

Hardcastle said "Hi, Frank, you saved me a call."

Mark sank back down in his seat, not looking forward to hearing the judge relay the details of this afternoon's escapade. But what followed was a semi-surprised grunt from Hardcastle, and a few more sub-vocal utterances, and a couple of terse yeses, punctuating short periods of intense listening. Whatever was being said, it didn't meet with the judge's approval.

"Yeah, sure. We can come down." He was casting another evaluating look at Westerfield. "It'll take us a little while, though." And with that decided, there was only a brief good-bye from the judge's end, and one that must have been just as perfunctory from Harper.

Hardcastle put the receiver back and let out a breath.

"Now what?" Mark finally asked. "And why didn't you tell him about Louie?"

"Louie's dead," the judge said sharply.

Westerfield's eyes came up abruptly from a heavy-lidded study of nothing in particular, snapping into focus on the older man.

"Leastwise they think it's him. Frank asked if you could come down and do a positive ID. I didn't think that'd be much of a problem, seeing as you saw the guy twice today alone."

Mark thought Hardcastle probably didn't mean it quite the way it had come out—part of it was frustration, but not even all of that was directed in Westerfield's direction. Still, it came across as at least peeved. It hardly mattered, though, the doc's own expression had flattened out into weary resignation even before the judge had uttered the words.

"You tried to convince him to come in," Mark said in hasty defense. "_Twice_. If you couldn't convince him, I don't know who else could've." He turned his face to Hardcastle. "The guy was wound up; he wasn't listening to reason. Nobody could have gotten him into a squad car."

Hardcastle pinched the bridge of his nose and then shook his head in what appeared to be an agreement with a negative.

"Yeah," he said, "sounds like it."

"How did he die?" Westerfield asked quietly. "Shot?"

Hardcastle nodded. "Two.The chest. In an alley, a couple blocks north of the mission. No witnesses, at least nobody who's willing to come forward, not even to say they heard the shots fired—it was called in anonymously from a pay phone."

"What time?"

"About an hour and a half ago. Pronounced at the scene. They've still got him there, but they want to bag him and take him to the morgue." All the irritation had gone out of the judge's voice. The words weren't harsh, merely flat. "You know, Saturday . . . they're kinda busy." There was a note of half-apology to that and, beyond that, a weariness that seemed to mirror the other man's. "He matches the description, but it might not be—"

"Milt." Westerfield halted him with a tone that was insistent, and quite firm. "Twenty minutes after he left the hospital, and a half mile south of where he was last seen." He shook his head once. "Let's go give the lieutenant his ID."

00000

"Not close enough for powder burns," Frank said. "The first shot must've knocked him back, The second went in at an upward angle—exit's through the right shoulder. And he still managed to turn over. Tried to crawl away."

Dusk, reinforced by the narrowness of the alley, was fast overtaking the scene. Colors were muted out, where there would have been any color at all. The blood smeared on the ground along the short path the man had dragged himself—four feet, no more—appeared more brown than red, and it had lost its glisten.

The three of them stood there, as though listening to a lecture from a tour guide. Harper spoke in his usual short, clipped phrases—only the essential words. Mark waited for him to lapse into the familiar immediacy of the present tense.

"I figure it like this," Frank jerked his chin toward the north-facing entry to the ally. "He comes down this way, maybe he's looking back there, over his shoulder. The shooter is here, behind the dumpster. He says something, or maybe just steps out. The victim turns, and takes the first slug, just to the right of center."

"Then it might have been random." Mark said. "No way anyone could've known he was headed this way and gotten here first."

Westerfield added nothing. He stepped over to the already bagged body on the gurney, just behind the morgue wagon. It was obvious he was in no mood for preparatory rituals or carefully reasoned out maybes.

Frank gave the attendant a nod and the zipper was pulled down.

The face was already distorted by the position the body had lain in. The night shadows were deep in the hollows of the man's eyes.

"It's him," the doc said on the tail end of a slowly exhaled breath.

"Any next of kin that you know of?" Frank asked.

A silent shake of the head and then, after a pause, "But he's a vet. Medical discharge . . . they owe him a burial. They've owed him that for twenty years now."

00000

The ride back to the estate had been made in near silence and, now that they were there, McCormick felt the tension even more. He decided Westerfield had it easiest, being able to plead fatigue even at this relatively early hour. Hardcastle made all the inquiries a good host had to make as soon as they were in the hallway, but it was obvious that the doc wanted nothing except to make it to the solitude of the room upstairs.

Mark watched him take the stairs slowly, with his good arm cradling the sling. The judge had already departed, toward the back of the house, not the den. Mark wondered if he was looking for a little solitude, too, but finally decided he wasn't going to get it—not just yet at any rate.

He followed him back, finding him in the kitchen putting away the things from their suddenly interrupted supper. He looked up as McCormick entered.

"You want another sandwich?" he asked mildly.

"No," Mark replied, "I want answers." He sat down and pointed to the chair across from him. "Why did you come high-tailing it back here today to look at _files_. What do you know and why aren't you talking about it? Is it something about the doc and Louie?"

The judge's eyebrows went up a notch at this last question, then his brow furrowed back down and he shook his head, letting out a sigh. He grabbed the back of the nearest chair and slid it out for himself, settling down into it slowly, as though he was buying himself some time to organize his thoughts.

"Not Louie, nah." Hardcastle shook his head. "I mean, yeah, they know each other—there's something going on there—but that's not what I was looking into. What I got this afternoon, from Frank, is the ID on some prints. They're Doe's. They lifted them off his file at the hospital, the page he signed when he was released. _Hah,_ that's what he signed it even, 'John Doe'. Cute, huh? Took a while to get it, needed a court order, some real careful wording, medical records and all."

Mark thought about that one and decided it must've been a project that required some guidance from a very interested ex-member of the judiciary, who could put the squeeze on a brother judge and then call in a favor from the FBI.

"Okay," he finally said, "So, we know who Doe is; we're halfway home . . . Who _is_ he, anyway?"

"Well," the judge scratched his nose thoughtfully, "unless they've got some real shady characters getting their prints on the paperwork over at St. Mary's, our Doe is a guy named William Tunis."

Mark frowned, squinted, thought for a moment, and then said, "Never heard of him."

"Good, then all those file cabinets down there are still useful, I guess. Tunis is a hit-man—mostly East Coast: New York, Jersey. I was trying to figure out who his contacts might be around here." Hardcastle looked at him with chagrin. "Just how goofy do you think I look when I'm down there?" he added.

"Nope," Mark waved that away with a half-smile, "Westerfield has standards." The smile slipped. "So, Louie, what was he, a random act of violence?"

"Nah, an inconvenient witness, most likely. Even if he didn't know the shooter, there was no way for that guy to be sure."

"And so the shooter just hung around in case he showed up again? I dunno . . . and Doe, I mean _Tunis_, he was the original intended victim? He was just hiding out. Maybe it was some sort of mob retaliation and the doc just got in the way. So why are you being so hush-hush about the latest developments?"

Hardcastle shook his head. "Wish I could say that, but, come on, kiddo, that would be a sloppy way to hide, don't ya think? Getting everybody all interested in him like that.

"And even if it was Tunis's idea of a clever disguise, why the hell would he agree to go to the hospital? The last thing he'd want is for people poking around, trying to figure out who he really was. I'm surprised they didn't fingerprint him straight out," he muttered, half to himself. "I guess medical people don't think that way."

Mark smiled thinly again. "You mean they don't think straight-off that everybody has a record somewhere?"

Hardcastle glanced up sharply. "_Lots_ of people get fingerprinted: military guys, people who are applying for some government jobs." He looked a little indignant and then added, "Files, resources. You gotta know who's got what."

Mark sighed. "Look, Judge, it's all right to think that way. And it's okay to have a bunch of stuff in the basement, really. It's not _normal_, but it's okay. Some people collect stamps, or baseball cards." He let that sit a moment, turning back to the main issue. "But if you're right, if Tunis wasn't hiding out, then what the hell _was_ he doing?"

"Bait," Hardcastle said flatly.

McCormick resisted another sigh. He'd already thought of that one; he'd only been hoping that the judge had come up with an alternative explanation. "Bait for Westerfield? _Why_?"

"Don't know that part, yet." The judge looked at him speculatively. "I don't suppose he's said anything while the two of you were our gallivanting around today. Any suspicions, worries?"

"Nothing more than you'd expect from a guy who just got shot yesterday." Mark frowned. "Heck, not even that much. He seemed pretty together today . . . he hasn't said anything to you?"

The judge shook his head. "But it makes sense; you see that, don't you? If someone wanted to get the doc out there, put him in a spot where him getting killed wouldn't necessarily look like it was intentional, they could set it up like this."

"They'd have to have known an awful lot about him—what kinda bait would work—what he'd do. And why the hell would they want to kill him? You think he's been out there playing the ponies? No way. That's ridiculous."

"Well, might be that Tunis was aiming to meet him in the hospital. Might've thought that'd be his in. Then, once he was his patient . . ." The judge's voice had trailed off; his expression had gone a little distant.

"What?" Mark said impatiently.

"His office." The judge leaned forward in his chair, both elbows on the table. "His records. Maybe there's something there that Tunis wants."

"Makes more sense than the ponies." Mark squinted again. "But then why shoot him? Or was the second guy trying to shoot Tunis after all? To keep him from getting close to the doc, maybe."

"It'd help if I knew who hired these guys. That's all I know."

"It'd help if you asked the doc if _he's_ got any ideas." Mark cast a gaze upwards at the ceiling in the general direction of the guest bedroom, then he dropped his eyes back down. "But maybe not tonight."

"Yeah," Hardcastle nodded. "You can ask him in the morning."

"_Me_?"

"Well, you're his lawyer." The judge shrugged with what was probably supposed to be a rare stab at diffidence. Then he frowned, adding, "And I'm starting to wonder if maybe he needs one."

00000

There hadn't been much left to say after that. Hardcastle watched the younger man fidget for a few moments, then get up, and push his chair back in slowly, all as if he was thinking it over, and all without raising a single argument in protest.

"I think I'll turn in. Been a kinda long day."

The judge nodded to that and watched him turn to leave. "See ya in the morning," he said.

"Yeah," McCormick said, slump-shouldered, giving him an off-hand wave without turning around.

He listened to the footsteps in the hallway, the front door opening and closing—both quietly—and then the silence. He thought about excuses for being not around when the hard questions got asked in the morning. Being there might be almost as damning as asking them himself, and that had been what he'd been trying to avoid all along. He wasn't sure how much of this McCormick was getting—that he didn't want to be the one to raise issues between him and his . . . _shrink? Friend?_

He didn't know which way to slice it, but he sure as hell knew it wasn't his place to throw a wet blanket on any constructive relationship of McCormick's. Didn't matter, though, when the dust settled, the kid would know who'd raised the issue in the first place. _So that's still it, huh? At the bottom of it all, you don't care how the rest of it comes out, just not having Mark blame you_ for_ all of it._

No, he was pretty sure he didn't want the doc riding for a fall.

Pretty sure.

Hardcastle let out a long, slow breath and started to rise from the table, with a half-formed impulse to head back downstairs to the files. He paused in that motion; he'd heard something, _someone_, on the stairs coming down. There wasn't anything particularly stealthy about it; the slow, measured tread might only have been caution and weariness.

The judge lowered himself back into his seat, strangely glad he hadn't made it any further into the basement. The footsteps were coming from the hallway now, obviously headed his way.

Westerfield didn't appear too surprised to see him there, either. He hadn't gotten very far into the getting ready for bed process, still in street clothes, though his shirt was unbuttoned. He gave a quick, small smile and a nod toward the kitchen counter.

"Forgot to take the pills." He stepped into the room.

Hardcastle was on his feet again, crossing over to the sink and opening the bottles, as he had that morning, then handing them over one at a time.

The doc tipped the first bottle into his bad hand and tapped out two tablets. These were followed by the antibiotic capsule. Then he accepted the glass of water the judge had drawn. He took everything with more apparent willingness than he'd shown that morning and two pain pills was one more than he'd shown sufferance for at breakfast.

He finally handed the glass back with a nod of thanks.

"You okay?" Hardcastle asked.

Westerfield seemed to give that more thought than a simple 'yes' would have required. He finally smiled ruefully.

"Been better."

The judge said nothing, but nodded in the direction of the chair McCormick had recently vacated. The other man moved toward it, not seeming either eager or reluctant. Hardcastle let him settle in before taking the chair across from him.

"Coffee?" he asked.

Phil shook his head. "Might be a bad idea. Beer'd be more to the point," he looked momentarily wistful, "but that'd be a bad idea, too." He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. "Don't worry. It's always this way. Hard to sleep for a while."

Hardcastle felt his eyebrow go up in question.

Westerfield gave him a one-shouldered shrug. "Never happened to you, I suppose. The massive screw-up."

The judge opened his mouth, the start of a protest, but the other man held up a hand.

"It was, at least it was in _my_ opinion, and mine's the one that counts as far as getting to sleep is concerned. Funny thing is," Westerfield's gaze drifted off a little to the side, "it wasn't the first time I misjudged things for Preet."

Hardcastle watched him, saying nothing. He settled back a little, unobtrusively he hoped, and gave the other man some space.

"And yet he trusted me," Westerfield shook his head slightly, in what appeared to be wonderment, "practically right from the start."

There was nothing more for a moment. Hardcastle bided his peace. When the silence settled into something a little more solid, he finally let the question slip out. "You knew him from 'Nam?"

"Ah?" The doc lifted his chin just enough to let it down again in a nod. "Yeah, met him there. He'd only been in country a week or so when his lieutenant sent him to me." Westerfield frowned slightly looking up again. "You're familiar with the concept of combat psychiatry?"

"Yeah." The judge nodded. "Had it back in WWII. Treat the guys near the front and as soon as possible."

"But a whole new set of rules in 'Nam." Westerfield squinted. "Every war is different," he finally sighed. "And every one's the same."

Silence again. Then a little more prodding. "So, what was wrong with Louie?"

"Ah, well, not all that much to start out with."

"But he was sent to you—"

Westerfield smiled thinly. "Yeah, his lieutenant wasn't too happy with him. Louie was there on the MacNamara plan. You're familiar with that? You know, 'Project 100,000', they dropped the minimum requirements for testing and went out and recruited a bunch of guys like Louie Preta, trained them as combat troops, used them to take the pressure off the rest of the selective service pool. _Selective_ service," he shook his head, "now there's an oxymoron. I don't believe much in the IQ as a useful measurement, but a few of those guys wouldn't have hit 70.

"Funny thing was, though," Westerfield's eyes had gone a little distant, "some of 'em actually did pretty well—helluva lot of courage under fire. But Preet's lieutenant, he was kind of dicey about the whole thing, sent him in. He was hoping I'd give Louie a medical. I talked to him, talked to the lieutenant. Preet was pretty eager, liked being given the responsibility, wanted to be part of his platoon. I wrote up a report, said he was okay. The whole thing didn't take more than a couple of hours."

"It's not rocket science," Hardcastle frowned. "I had guys who came straight from behind a plow. Some of 'em could barely read, but they knew which way to point the gun and when to stay low. Hell, better than some college boys."

"Yeah." The doc gave that a nod. "And I didn't hear anything more from the lieutenant, so it seemed like I'd been right."

"'Seemed'?"

Another nod, this one more reluctant. "Six months went by; I didn't even remember the name. We were seeing a thousand guys a month. I got another request, this time it's a forensic evaluation on a prisoner from Long Binh Stockade—he was being held on a charge of murder."

"Louie?"

"Yeah, fit to stand trial or not? The story was he'd been accused of killing another man from his squad. No question he did it, shot him in front of witnesses and then threw the rifle down and didn't resist arrest."

"What happened?"

"Well, that took some digging. Different lieutenant this time—different platoon, hell, a different _company_. Louie had been out of synch with his original unit. I should've taken that into account in the first evaluation. The other guys did their tour—got sent back. Preet was held behind and put into a new company to shore up their numbers. That was how they did it. Hell on everybody, more so when the guy being infused was someone like Louie—you know what they called them?"

Hardcastle shook his head.

"MacNamara's morons. Not everybody, you know, not the guys in Preet's original unit, most likely. He'd gotten himself two bronze stars with them . . . but that's what some people called them." Westerfield shook his head.

"The second time I saw him, I wouldn't have recognized him, except there was my old report—in his records from nine months back. This time around he was pretty deep into what looked like a psychotic break. Not talking. Took a couple days of Thorazine before he'd even eat anything. I did talk to a couple of other guys from the squad; I finally got Preet to talk to me.

"He didn't really remember what had happened, but there was one other guy in the unit, he'd come in about the same time as Louie. He said Preet had been made the scapegoat, ridiculed, bullied. The man who'd been shot was the instigator. He'd made a hobby out of pushing Louie's buttons. Preet had started acting strange, that made the others react more.

"He was practically short time when he finally snapped. A smarter man would have sat back, shirked a little, ridden his time out. But Louie wasn't smart, and he was probably already sliding into his first acute episode." Westerfield was frowning deeply. He finally shook his head again. "Took me a whole lot longer than a couple hours that second time. 'Schizoaffective disorder with paranoid ideation and mild mental retardation.' That was just the bottom line, though. The whole report went on for quite a few pages."

Westerfield cocked his head slightly. "The medical battalion chief had a few choice words for me. Said maybe I ought to reconsider, on account of that my original report had said the guy was good to go and, with the witnesses and all, it was pretty much an open and shut case for first degree murder."

"You let it stand though, huh?"

"Yeah." The doc said firmly. "Being wrong once, well, I'd just have to live with that. But I sure as hell wasn't going to be wrong _twice_." Westerfield looked up at him again. "You know what I mean? I had to fix it, at least the part of it I could fix."

Hardcastle was aware that he was expected to respond, but nothing came readily to mind except the obvious.

"Yeah," he said quietly, "I know."

The other man nodded wearily. "So Louie went home on a medical. Not fit to stand trial. I lost track of him again. He must've done better back here. The Thorazine helped, most likely, and taking away all the other stressors. Putting him into a more stable environment."

"But eventually they let him go?"

"'Eventually' was a couple of months," Westerfield said with mild disgust. "I don't think I should be the one to talk. After all, I'd said he was fit for combat duty. But that was the dawn of the outpatient era. Get people out of institutions and back into the community. Normalize them . . . well, he really wasn't dangerous as long as you didn't hand him an M-16 and then call him names and bully him. Not dangerous to others, at any rate . . ."

He settled into silence. It looked to Hardcastle like the pills were finally kicking in. It seemed as if the story was going to stop far short of recent events.

But then, just as abruptly, he started speaking once again. "But that, that's all old news. I'd say I'd come to terms with it; I understood which part of it was mine and which was things that were beyond my control—'The System.'"

Hardcastle nodded again, just once.

"But _today_ . . ." Westerfield rubbed the bridge of his nose and shook his head. Obviously the pills weren't quite as effective as they'd seemed.

"You did the best you could with the information you had," Hardcastle said. "If we'd backed Preta into a corner it's very possible someone might've gotten hurt, and then you'd be sitting here second-guessing yourself on that one." He paused, studying the other man, wondering if he was getting through. He finally started up again, "Judges, doctors, we get used to it; you sign a piece of paper and something happens—"

"'With great power comes great responsibility.'"

The judge frowned. "Is that Winston Churchill?"

"No," Westerfield looked at him wryly, "Spiderman, I think."

"Yeah, well," Hardcastle shrugged, "lots of responsibility, but not as much power as you think. Things happen that you have no control over. You can only influence the outcome so much and after that—"

"You lie awake a few nights and try to figure out how you'll fix it . . . or do better next time," the doc said on a heavy sigh.

"That's about it." Hardcastle watched him rise slowly, his good hand on the table to steady himself. "But tonight you ought to try and get some sleep. Not one more damn thing you can do right now."

"Yeah, too late for that," Westerfield admitted. He was on his feet still looking unreconciled.

The judge felt a twinge of guilt of his own, for leaving questions unasked. The other man was in the doorway before he blurted it out, "Catching the guy who did it, that's one thing we can do."

Westerfield paused, looking over his shoulder with a half-frown. "I suppose," he finally said. "Won't do Preet much good, though."

"No, but it's the right thing to do. It's justice. That's really what justice it, doing the right thing."

The man in the doorway smiled thinly and finally nodded. "Better late than never," he said, and then he turned and was gone.

The judge sat for a moment, listening to the retreating footsteps in the hallway, and then up the stairs, again slow. Then he got to his feet himself, and headed for the basement.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

The estate was Sunday-morning quiet, though eight o'clock was plenty late, even by Sunday standards. McCormick had already been up for an hour himself, after a night that had involved a certain amount of tossing and turning. He'd filled that hour as best he could without looking like he was stalling, but eventually he'd run out of things to do.

Not that he thought there was much hope of waiting things out. Clearly the judge didn't want to be the one to broach the difficult topics with Westerfield. That was best left to the man's lawyer. Mark frowned at that notion. It made a certain amount of sense, he supposed; the judge was Westerfield's friend—suspicion and hard questions didn't fit well into that.

He strolled up the drive, but then deviated to avoid the front door, heading around the garage side to the back, instead. Coming in through the kitchen door would barely rate a greeting, let alone a knock. He was feeling just a little stealthy, like a man in need of a reconnoiter and some caffeine before he tackled a problem.

All that stealth was to no avail. The doc was already sitting at the kitchen table. He had a glass of water in front of him with one pill bottle sitting next to it. The other was in his good hand, and he was fiddling with it.

He lifted his head at the sound of the back door opening and muttered, "Damn childproof caps."

Mark smiled, stepped over and took it from him, doing the necessary maneuvers and handing it back. A capsule was retrieved and taken. He reached for the other bottle and started to open that one as well.

Westerfield swallowed the water, and said, "Not this morning." The shake of his head ended in something that was close to a shudder. "I'd forgotten how really crappy that stuff makes a person feel."

McCormick looked at label and then nodded sympathetically. Then he frowned. "But if it hurts."

"It doesn't hurt _that_ bad." Westerfield shook his head more definitively this time.

"Okay." Mark set it down again, but on the table, still in sight and within reach. He turned to the counter, saw the carafe of the coffee-maker sitting empty and looked back over his shoulder as he reached for it. "You the only one up?"

"Ah . . . yeah. He _was_ up. I heard him come upstairs about four this morning."

"You were awake then, too?" Mark smiled. It was beginning to look like they might as well have gotten the poker table out, or maybe roamed the double digit channels in search of a black and white oater or two. At least it sounded like the judge had finally hit the wall.

He measured out the coffee and put it in the filter. The carafe was filled and poured and he replaced it, watching the first drips become a trickle. Otherwise there was silence. He puttered with the cups as though this required his sole attention. It was only as he turned again to bring them to the table that he realized that Westerfield was studying it all with what appeared to be rapt attention.

"Black, right?" Mark asked, sitting down and sliding the one cup across.

"Black," the doc replied, but he didn't reach for the cup right away.

McCormick looked at him closely for the first time since he'd walked in. The man appeared paler even than he'd been Friday evening, and there was something else—a certain _tautness_ in his face. It might have been there the night before but now the combined effect was not healthy.

"We need to head back to the ER this morning? Mark had pitched it halfway between a question and a statement. The slight upward inflection at the end was the merest courtesy, the deference due to someone older, and usually wiser, than him.

It looked like Westerfield was opening his mouth to protest. McCormick forged ahead.

"Probably ought to at least get it looked at, get the dressing changed, right? I'm not that good at the bandaging thing and if you let Hardcase do it he'll use two packages of gauze and a whole roll of tape. It'll be practically bullet-proof." Mark bit down on that last part, wondering if his own subconscious had suddenly betrayed him.

"Anyway," he added, "you don't look so hot this morning. You ought to have someone check you out again."

To his surprise, Westerfield's protest seemed to have died away unvoiced, but the unwaveringly hard study was back, and he shifted a bit uneasily under the gaze. A protest would have been easier to deal with, he decided.

"Maybe some breakfast first?" Mark finally asked, a little lamely.

The doc reached for the cup, took a swig, looked thoughtful for a moment. "Okay," he said, "what's up? He's in the basement half the night and you look like you didn't get much rest." He frowned. "I know why _I _couldn't sleep; what's your excuse?"

Mark sat back. The 'ah', which was the sole immediate thing to come out of his mouth, floated there a minute, an obvious admission that something _was_ up. He put his own cup down. Through all this the other man waited patiently but expectantly.

The doc finally sighed. "It's a disappointment, I'm sure, that the guy with all the advice turns out to be in short supply of common sense . . . lethally short supply," he added heavily.

Mark couldn't stifle his look of surprise and then said 'no' hurriedly enough that it might have come across as denying the obvious. Westerfield seemed to take it that way, still looking several shades deeper than chagrined.

"Doc, _really_, that's not it." He paused for a moment, realizing that this meant he had to go ahead with the rest. He plunged forward, no turning back.

"The guy, John Doe, they might have an ID on him, prints."

Westerfield looked briefly relieved, maybe at the slight change in topic, but this only lasted a moment before it gave way to puzzlement. "But, then why didn't—?"

"Yesterday afternoon, while we were out, that's when they found out . . ." Mark trailed off on that, aware that he was drifting back into territory he'd hoped to get away from.

The doc was frowning deeply now. "He didn't say anything." It was obvious that he was referring to Hardcastle.

"Listen, everything happened kind of fast, and last night we both thought you just needed some sleep."

Westerfield looked at him impatiently. "So, who is he?"

Mark took a deep breath and tossed down all his cards. "A hit man from back East. His name is William Tunis."

He was watching carefully, despite his deep and implicit faith in the man sitting across from him. He was relieved to be rewarded with nothing more than a continued look of puzzlement.

"No bells, huh?"

Westerfield shook his head. "Not the name, no. But I already knew I didn't know him. I'd never seen him before. A hit man?" he added in quiet surprise. "You're sure?"

Mark kept his gaze steady.

"But," Westerfield paused, obviously already thinking through all the permutations, "he isn't even the guy who had the gun." He paused again, sitting quietly with his brow slightly furrowed. "Okay, we already know he's a fake, but, a hit man? My God, that is such stupid way to hide out."

Mark felt a slight smile of surprise.

Westerfield looked up from the puzzle. "What?" he asked sharply.

McCormick let a quick grin slip out. "Nothing, no, I mean . . . okay, that was exactly what Hardcase said." The grin froze and faded. "So if he isn't hiding out, what the hell _is_ he doing?"

It was obvious that a sleepless night and a dose of pain medicine hadn't dulled the older man's wits too much. His eyes had narrowed perceptively.

"Good question," he said, after only a moment's hesitation. "But he wasn't the one who tried to kill me. Still hard to say if _anyone_ was trying to do that," he added a little defensively. "So, that's what Milt was doing, checking in the files to see who this Tunis guy might be working for, looking for connections between him and . . ." That trailed off and then, a moment later, "Like I said, I've never heard the name before. I've met some murderers." There was just the slightest hitch and then he moved past it. "No hit men, though, not that I know of."

"Well, now you've met two of them," Mark said. "And the question is, who hired them—"

"And why." Westerfield quirked one corner of his mouth. "I'm not running off to Las Vegas on my days off, Mark, and I think I'd know if I crossed anybody bad enough to make them want me dead."

"You'd think," Mark said philosophically. "But sometimes these things kind of creep up on you. You aren't involved in any forensic psychiatry stuff right now, are you?" He almost thought he'd seen a flinch, but if it was, it passed so fast as to be almost invisible. The answer flashed back, quick and certain.

"No, nothing like that. Not right now. The usual commitments. Lots of those—every psychiatrist does those. I've had patients threaten me over it, but no one's ever gone any further than lunging across the table."

This was said with a dry, matter-of-fact air that made Mark's eyebrow rise slightly.

"Anyone recently? Or anybody recently released that you thought maybe ought not to have been?"

"Mark, it's not that dramatic, and, besides, the kind of person who's that delusional usually isn't well enough organized to hire one hit man, let alone _two_."

McCormick gave that an acquiescing nod.

"But only one of them may have been trying to kill you, and I'm not even completely sure which one. The other one, Tunis, might have wanted something from your office—that's Hardcastle's theory."

Westerfield eased back in his chair, obviously giving that some thought and, just as obviously, not liking where it was heading. "Something in my files?"

"It's possible."

There was a long moment of silence. Westerfield finally pinched the bridge of his nose. "Even if I did know something, if I had a _patient_ who knows something that these men need to know—"

"Yeah," Mark interrupted sharply, "medical records, I know, privacy and all that, _fine_. I'm not asking you to break the seal of the confessional or anything, but would you at least tell me if there's anything you can think of?" He stopped, frowned, and started again "Not who, or what . . . just if you think we're on the right track here."

He saw a guarded expression on the older man's face.

"I'm your lawyer right now," Mark coaxed gently. "There's confidentiality there, too."

"The one doesn't negate the other," Westerfield replied with an almost abrupt certainty.

"We're talking about your life here. People with guns."

"You're guessing about that."

"Not the guns, but, _yeah_, the rest of it." Mark leaned forward, "and I'm _tired_ of guessing." He eased back a little, his face set in a look of firm disapproval.

The other man said nothing.

"Look," he McCormick said, trying to curb his rising frustration, "Hardcastle spent the night in the basement, huh? That means he'll have a list, probably has it already, guys that might have hired Tunis. But chances are, even if he comes up with the right name, it won't be one you'll recognize. But it might be that if _you_ had a list—people you're seeing—"

Westerfield was already shaking his head.

"—Dammit, Doc, just names. Anyway, we're not the cops. But the odds are good that the someone Tunis is interested is in those files downstairs, too. It's just a matter of cross-referencing."

"I can't—"

"Just _think _about it," Mark said intensely. "_Please_?"

The other man was quite clearly doing exactly that. He finally conceded. "Not a list. I can't do that. But if he finds a name I recognize, then I suppose that person might be in danger, too."

McCormick nodded swiftly, glad to at least have some acknowledgment that there _was_ a potential for danger.

"Okay," he said, "it's a start. But like I said, you may have to meet us more than half-way on this."

"I dunno." Westerfield shook his head again, an uncertain echo of his earlier insistence.

"Just think about it, will ya?" Mark got to his feet, and turned to the refrigerator. "And we're going to the ER after breakfast."

He got to his feet and set about making breakfast, half listening the whole time for signs of life from upstairs. He had a notion that Hardcase was waiting for the coast to be clear before he made an appearance.

Bacon, eggs, and toast got made. Mark dished up and carried it to the table, then dug into his own with a dogged enthusiasm that was intended to inspire emulation.

There wasn't much of that. Westerfield made some minor efforts but he seemed distracted, distant. He didn't even protest when Mark mentioned the ER again after clearing the plates.

"And maybe one of those pain pills," McCormick added, "now that you've eaten."

The doc shook his head, but got up slowly, looking like he was going to go willingly. Mark kept the smile internal. He was a master of the old trick of asking for two things in order to get one. _On the other hand_, even the internal smile faded, _he must be in worse shape even than he looks, to fall for it._

He grabbed a scratch pad and pencil off the counter by the phone. Westerfield cast him a questioning look.

"Just a note," McCormick said. "To let him know where we went," he added soberly.

Westerfield nodded at that, looking pretty sober himself.

00000

He heard the truck starting up but didn't look out the window. That would have been a flat-out admission that he was hiding, rather than just taking his time getting sorted out on a Sunday morning. He'd smelled the bacon a half an hour ago, so he knew McCormick had already been up and at it for a while. It wasn't a donut run, not _after_ breakfast. No, most likely it was another visit to the ER. Nothing serious, though, given the timing; you could deduce a lot from a pan of bacon.

Hardcastle moseyed out into the hallway, noted the half-open door to the empty guest bedroom, and sauntered downstairs. He announced himself with a casual 'good morning' before he even made it to the kitchen and, unsurprised, he got no answer.

The note was on the kitchen table, pinned down with a saltshaker. The content was reassuring and casual. The judge checked his watch and allotted himself at least forty-five minutes, even given the light Sunday morning traffic. He had at least another half-drawer to comb through. It would take every minute of that.

He grabbed a cup and poured himself what was left from the carafe. Then he headed for the basement stairs.

00000

The same guy was on duty as had been on Friday night. McCormick tried to remember what Westerfield had called him. _Hal._ The greetings were cordial and the ER guy seemed determined not to say anything too disparaging in front of company, even after he got a look at the unwrapped wound.

Body language said a lot, though. That and a dryly-stated inquiry, "You are taking the antibiotic, aren't you?"

A glum nod in return.

"No fever?"

"Not today," Westerfield said a little cagily.

"And you're getting some rest?"

This time the psychiatrist shot a sideward glance. Mark kept his face absolutely neutral. He was not above cooperating with this little bit of obfuscation to gain some moral leverage in the matter they'd discussed earlier this morning. Westerfield seemed to relax just slightly, then tense up again, as though he'd put the whole thing together almost instantly.

"Not all that much rest . . .you heard what happened to Louie Preta?" He fastened his medical colleague with a grim stare and seized the moral high ground through confession.

"Yeah." Hal nodded, looking concerned. "What the hell is going on? First you, now one of the frequent fliers. Phil, I've got half a notion to write up one of those damn certificates on you—'unable to care for self'—throw you upstairs for a couple of days, get you off the street."

Mark let an almost inaudible grunt of worried agreement slip out, and got a quick, sour look from the psychiatrist. In truth, he wanted him where he could keep an eye on him, and also he'd be harder to lean on if he was safely holed up in the hospital. He was half-relieved when Westerfield pasted on a thin smile and shook his head at the other man.

"I'll be okay, Hal, really. I've just got some stuff to sort through. The police have an angle on Louie's murder." He hesitated, then added, "That guy, Doe, he probably won't come back, but if he does, be careful."

"We already heard that from the LAPD: 'Exercise extreme caution. Call 911 immediately.' The whole nine yards."

"If they're right about who he is, he's not going to show."

The other doctor nodded, took one last grimacing look at the now rebandaged shoulder and said, "If you change your mind—"

But Westerfield was already off the gurney and on his feet. "I'll be okay," he said with a quietly stubborn nonchalance that got him a hard look from Hal.

Mark sighed, shrugged, and followed him out of the cubicle.

00000

He'd been at it an hour—looking up from his stack of files and the note pad, and checking his watch at ever more frequent intervals—but done, finally. He hastily slid the stack to the side, not bothering to refile what he might easily need again soon anyway.

Hardcastle was starting to wonder what the delay was, not that he wasn't grateful to have finished his list. He had gotten back up to the kitchen, even made a fresh pot of coffee, before he heard the truck pulling into the back drive alongside the garage.

He was seated at the table, coffee poured and the Sunday paper strategically open in front of him to a random page, before the footsteps, slowly mounting the stairs, reached the landing outside the kitchen door.

McCormick had the door open before the judge could even make a gesture to get up himself. The younger man's greeting consisted of a weary look, as he ushered Westerfield in.

A fresh bandage hadn't done much for the doc. He trudged in and looked like he might have been intending to try for a nod and heading straight on through, when Hardcastle pointed toward the chair opposite him at the table. There was a polite smile involved, alternated with a quick glance toward McCormick. This was answered with the subtlest of nods, which was plenty enough as far as the judge was concerned. He had assumed correctly that the topic had already come up for discussion this morning.

Mark stayed by the counter, busying himself with coffee cups, all quiet stage business as far as the judge could see, an excuse for hanging around, though Hardcastle wasn't certain if it was to help or referee.

"How you feeling this morning?" the judge asked, figuring it wouldn't hurt to start out in relatively neutral territory. "How was the visit to the ER?"

"Saw Hal Beaufort," Westerfield responded. It night have been a calculated non-answer, but that wasn't obvious.

"He didn't keep you, huh?" Hardcastle replied a little more pointedly.

"He wanted to," Mark interjected, making it clear he wasn't going to be a referee, though he'd probably cling to the Good Cop role for as long as possible.

Westerfield grimaced. "That was just his misplaced sense of humor. You have to know him."

Mark grunted, just short of a full harrumph.

Hardcastle shook his head lightly, then cocked it. "Got something I want to show you."

He saw Mark stiffen a little but Westerfield sat quietly, only his expression slightly more tense. It was obviously not going to be a surprise; no doubt McCormick would have predicted his _modus operandi_ and already shared it with the doc.

"Some names, a list." He closed the newspaper and set it aside, revealing the pad that he'd brought up from the basement.

The other man's eyes tracked down, taking it in: a column and a half, over forty possible suspects. He'd done it in careful block print instead of his usual scrawl, which would have been decipherable by McCormick only.

He pushed the pad across the table, letting it sit for a moment there. "People who might have hired John Doe," he said unnecessarily, by way of introduction. And then almost apologetically, though he wasn't sure why, he added, "From the files."

As he'd expected, Westerfield seemed to get what it was all about without further explanation. He reached for the pad after only a moment's hesitation, though he didn't look pleased. Hardcastle watched him turn it toward himself and study it, his lips slightly pursed.

The judge wondered just how persuasive McCormick had been that morning. Westerfield looked tired, but not browbeaten. He looked slightly wary, as well. There were no immediate signs of recognition. Hardcastle wasn't too sure what that meant, and after a moment more of study, the psychiatrist pushed the list away and sat back in his seat.

"None of the people on that list are patients of mine," he said with calm finality, but there was a tension around his eyes that seemed at odds with the words.

Mark seemed to have picked up on the same thing. "Former patients?" he asked testily.

Westerfield shook his head, looking more subdued than defiant. The judge was considering tacks, and wondering just how hard he could push this thing before it snapped, when the phone interrupted.

Westerfield twitched, Hardcastle frowned, and Mark reached for it, answering with a terse 'hello'.

The younger man's frown deepened and he murmured a "Sure, Frank, he's right here," then handed the receiver over to the judge.

Hardcastle took it, not taking his eyes off the psychiatrist. "Yeah, Frank?"

Mark had edged in a bit, as if to hear whatever it was firsthand. Westerfield still sat a little huddled but was overtly interested.

Frank gave the news straight-up and unembellished, sounding like a man who knew his Sunday was shot to hell. This time, though, no assistance with the ID was required. The prints had turned up a pretty quick match from the local records. Hardcastle thanked him and hung up. Mark stood there with one eyebrow cocked.

"Spill," he said, after only a moment's silence.

"Not for sure," Hardcastle said, still watching Westerfield, "but they might have the shooter."

The doc's eyes shot up, suddenly very interested, undeniably relieved.

"Dead, though," Hardcastle added. "Shot."

Mark frowned. Westerfield's relief clouded over a little.

"Not the same caliber as Louie's, either, but they found the body a few blocks from where Louie was killed. A guy named Mickey O'Donell."

Mark mouthed the name, still frowning.

"Yeah, you've heard of him. He was on that list I made a few years ago, of guys who'd worked worked for Sylvester Romney." He watched Mark blanch slightly. Romney was dead but not forgotten, at least not the circumstances.

Westerfield was studying them both with a questioning expression.

"Romney's long gone," Mark explained tersely. "O'Donell was sort of free-lance, right?" he turned back to the judge. "He wasn't very high up on the list of known associates, if I remember right."

The judge nodded and shot a look back at Westerfield. "He did a lot of work for a hood named Cartori. Arnold Cartori." He reached out and tapped one finger on the pad, near the top of _that_ list. "See?"

Westerfield's eyes stayed fixed on him, not the list, as though he thought his expression might betray him if he looked down.

Hardcastle sighed. "Tunis is still out there. Unless there's even more than _two_ hit men, I'd say he popped O'Donell. And unless Tunis is carrying more than one gun, I suppose that leaves O'Donell as the guy who got Louie.

"But I don't think Tunis went out and joined the vigilante league. He's probably still on the clock and he's most likely still interested in you, Doc."

"I've never even met Cartori," Westerfield said quietly, but there was something in the phrasing that riveted the other two men.

The silence stretched out until Hardcastle snapped it with a terse, "But you've heard of him?"

"Would you say that's an uncommon name?" the psychiatrist asked, quiet and tense. There was a long pause again. By the end of it, Westerfield seemed to have made his mind up about something. "Not my file. You can't have that. There won't be anything useful in that. Honestly, she said he was in business. I think she said wholesale meat."

Hardcastle nodded eagerly. "That's Arnie. He uses the shipments as cover for a bunch of other stuff. What's your connection, Phil?" he added, in a tone that was meant to brook no more hesitation.

There was just a little more, but clearly exigencies were starting to define themselves.

"A . . . member of his family, a _possible_ member of his family, might be a patient of mine." Westerfield pinched his lips down as though he'd already said something regrettable and wished he could take it back.

"Doc, you wanna be a little more specific or do we have to get a subpoena?" Mark had abandoned all pretense of being the good cop and was pinching the bridge of his nose.

Westerfield gave him an irritated glance then finally slumped a little more and said, "Magdalena Cartori, she's a patient of mine. She talks about her husband 'Arnie' a lot, nothing criminal, really. I thought he was a businessman. There's absolutely _nothing_ in that file that would be useful for this, and certainly nothing worth killing someone over."

"But he wouldn't necessarily know that," McCormick pointed out. "It's possible that the idea of his wife talking to a shrink made Artie nervous, or . . . " Mark frowned, licked his lips once nervously, "he thinks he's got some other reason to not like you . . ."

Westerfield shook his head and smiled slowly. "Transference happens. But that's all it is. Just transference."

Hardcastle cleared his throat. "You know, Doc, guys who have people killed as part of the cost of doing business, they might not know the difference between 'transference' and their wife spending too much time talking to another guy."

"And if that is what's at the bottom of this," Mark pointed out, "Mrs. Cartori may be in some trouble with him, too."

Westerfield nodded worriedly. "I haven't seen her since Tuesday. She's been once a week lately."

"Problems with Arnie?" Hardcastle asked, not really expecting an answer. The silence was quite informative.

"There's a phone number in my records," the psychiatrist finally said, looking even more worried.

00000

It had been a quick decision after that—Mark would go and Westerfield would accompany him. On a Sunday morning it would take ID as well as a passkey to get past the lobby in his building.

The hallways were dimly lit and quiet. The waiting room looked undisturbed. All this normality seemed to be reassuring Westerfield, even in the face of a second murder, that whatever was going on didn't involve him except incidentally. By the time they got to the records area, in an alcove behind his receptionist's desk, he actually pointed out the undisturbed lock on the door.

"See?" It was a general and all-purpose observation. The doctor smiled thinly as he made it.

Mark looked down at the lock, which would have taken him all of fifteen seconds to get through, leaving no trace that he had been there. He made an even quicker decision that this wasn't one of those times where it was necessary to be right. He'd save his moral authority for when it counted. He asked for the key politely and waited while Westerfield fumbled with the key ring one-handedly.

Once past the door, the psychiatrist fetched the file out and thumbed through it. Then he reached toward the copy machine on the counter behind the receptionist's desk and turned it on. While it was warming up he leafed further and more slowly, as though he was reviewing the whole thing.

From all of this Mark gathered that he was only intending to copy the front page—only the demographic and billing information, and that he'd leave the rest of it behind, out of reach and therefore no sort of temptation.

"_Doc_."

Westerfield glanced up at this. It looked as if he'd immediately understood Mark's protest.

"It's been safe here so far," he said mildly. "Locked closet in a secure building."

Mark shook his head sadly, reset the lock and closed the door. Then he stepped past the puzzled man. He opened the top drawer of the receptionist's desk and, sending up a swift and silent 'thank-you' to whoever was in charge of his luck today, pulled out a thin metal nail-file and a heavy-duty paper clip.

His luck held. He inserted the first item into the lock and applied a slight pressure. It didn't even require any probing with the other—just a quick rake and it was all over. It was several magnitudes faster than Westerfield's search for the key had been.

Mark kept his expression even. He let the other man draw his own conclusions about the rest of the security system. It would have been by no means as much of a pushover as this last small hurdle, but certainly not in the same league, risk-wise, as _killing_ somebody.

The doctor stared down at the open lock for a whole two seconds, then reached toward the copy machine and turned it off.

"It'll be safer with me," he said dryly, with only the slightest emphasis on the second pronoun.

Mark made no further demands. He carefully, and with not the slightest hint of irony, set the lock on the door again and closed it.

Then they departed.

The next part hadn't been on the itinerary they'd discussed with Hardcastle, nor was McCormick entirely sure who'd had the notion first. All he knew for certain was that almost as soon as they were back in the truck, Westerfield had the file open again and was staring down at the front page, lips pursed in a half frown.

Mark waited a little guiltily. He hated volunteering when he could just sit there and be drafted, but he didn't want to drive out of his way unnecessarily before Westerfield made up his mind to ask. Fortunately, the man didn't seem to have as many objections to deal with. Mark's hand had barely hesitated over the gearshift before he heard him clear his throat.

"Might run by there," he gestured off-handedly to the open file in his lap. "It's practically on the way home. Have a quick look. I'm not even sure if this is a place where we can reach her without him knowing. That'd be better, I think, if I had a little talk with her on the side. There's privacy issues on that end, too, you know."

It had come out quietly, but just slightly staccato. Mark suddenly recognized it as nervousness and uncertainty, carefully controlled by someone who didn't permit himself either luxury very often.

He nodded once in agreement. "Couldn't hurt. Just get the lay of the land; we won't _do_ anything, unless it looks for certain that she's alone there," he let the speculation spin out. "If she is, it might be better to talk to her face-to-face, don't you think?"

"I don't know," Westerfield looked up from the page. "This is really pretty far outside my usual area of operation. I'm not even sure what to say to her." He closed his eyes briefly then nodded once, as if in decision and opened them again. "Yes, better in person, no matter what I say."

Mark glanced over at the page, just demographic information. He took the address in, and nodded once. He wouldn't be able to say later on that he'd put up much of a fight.

_It's okay. I won't let him do anything stupid. This is just a quick reconnoiter._

00000

Hardcastle ate a perfunctory breakfast that was two parts coffee and one part toast. He'd already been back down to the basement to fetch the file that had been wisely unrefiled. He'd made a phone call, thinking that as long as Frank had already had his day ruined, a few more questions wouldn't be that much of a burden.

After an hour or so he was back in the kitchen, calculating times and distances and not liking the results he was coming up with. He finally opened the file he'd carried up from the basement and gave it one last glance. Then he made up his mind, feeling only a little guilty.

00000

It wasn't the white marble-colonnaded experiment in rococo excess that Mark had been expecting from a crime lord, but it also wasn't the get-away condo that his wife might occupy when she didn't want to be entertaining his fellow dons. It was somewhere in-between, and could have passed for any upper-level executive-type's digs. There were no immediate signs of who, if anyone, was currently at home, except for a car parked in the drive—a late model Caddie.

Mark pulled to the curb a discreet distance back and wondered how long they could sit there before their presence became noticeable to the neighbors, at least. He decided he didn't really care, not even if Cartori himself was watching. There came a point in these things where it paid to serve notice that you knew what was what, and it was hardly likely that the man would do anything rash out in front of his own home.

He gradually became aware that Westerfield was watching him, rather than the house, and that the expression on his face was expectantly curious. He finally turned slowly.

"If you're waiting for me to suggest something, I'm fresh out of ideas." Then Mark frowned. He'd caught a glimpse of something in the rearview mirror and turned even further, now staring hard over his shoulder.

The 'Vette wasn't one-of-a-kind, but its driver was. Mark straightened forward abruptly and let out a long sigh. Hardcase was already out of the car and coming up alongside the truck. In truth they'd only beat him there by a few minutes, but for all he knew there was a note back on the table in the kitchen at home, saying exactly where he'd gone, properly signed, dated and timed. Mark hunched down just slightly.

"It was on the way home," he muttered.

Hardcastle had both elbows on the open window sill and his arms crossed, leaning in a little. "Same address as Frank had as his last known. Anything interesting?"

Mark was about to explain, and not at all defensively, that they'd just gotten there themselves, but he'd had no time to answer before he felt a tug on his sleeve and heard Westerfield say, "Look."

He saw a woman exiting the house—middle thirties, attractively dressed in linen and silk, with more than a moderate amount of jewelry that was probably the real deal. She had a clutch purse tucked under one arm and was heading toward the car with a no-nonsense stride. So far she was alone.

"It's her." Westerfield had reached across himself and was opening the door, a moment too quick for Mark.

The movement caught the woman's eye. She stood frozen at the door of her own vehicle, then shaded her eyes for a moment with her hand. This dropped to her side after a second, but she made no further moves. Mark would have said her posture, briefly tense, now merely reflected confusion. Then she stepped out toward the sidewalk, as if to get a better look, and crossed the street on the diagonal, to intercept Westerfield before he reached her yard.

"Doctor Westerfield," she said, with a quick, angled, questioning glance at the other two men, drawing up a short ways behind him. "How are you? I'd heard—"

Exactly what she'd heard and _how_ went unstated. She broke off and cast an anxious look over her shoulder. "This really isn't a good time," she added, as she turned back to him. "Perhaps Tuesday . . . you will be having office hours?"

"Your husband is home?"

"No," she said hastily, "we're living apart. It's recent, just a week now. But the staff, the neighbors. I wouldn't like this to get back to him."

"What 'this' do you mean?" Westerfield asked with a surprising amount of professional detachment.

The woman looked at him in astonishment. "You . . . being _here_." Then she frowned. "Why did you come here, anyway?"

Mark caught the doc's quirked almost-smile, and the silence that followed, as though the man was waiting her out, hoping she'd give her own theory. As interrogation tools went, it was subtle. Most people couldn't stand silence and would fill it with more information than you could get by asking straight out.

This time the woman chewed her lip, then drew herself up a little straighter and said, simply, "My husband is a dangerous man."

She might have been expecting more reaction to this than a simple nod and Westerfield's quiet, "So I've heard."

Her stare shifted over to Hardcastle and her apparent puzzlement deepened.

"I know you," she said stiffly.

"Presiding judge, your husband's last brush with the legal system. The trial where the one witness recanted and another one disappeared."

"Ahh." She smiled archly. "'Hardcase' Hardcastle. I remember now."

"Thought you might," the judge said dryly. "I remember you sat in the front row. Very devoted."

"Duty," she sniffed. "_I_ was brought up properly. Family responsibilities." Her smile had flattened into something very brittle. "Now _this_," she added tersely.

Mark stepped in, trying to get the discussion back on the tracks. "We think your husband hired someone to go after the doc here, a hit man named O'Donell."

It was unmistakable; the woman's eyes had gone wide, but it was only momentary. She recaptured her aplomb and shook her head gently, as if they had committed some minor breach of etiquette and were in need of guidance.

"The shooting, I heard that a street person was involved, that his interference caused the accident, absolutely regrettable.

"At any rate," she sighed as though she found the whole thing rather tedious, "Mickey is not in my husband's employ. He might have done the odd job for him previously, but he would never do anything against my wishes. It was my father who gave him his start; he owes a great deal to _my_ family."

"Well, then," Hardcastle said sharply, "you'll probably want to send flowers to his funeral."

This time it was a palpable hit. She paled and the recovery was a little slower, but recover she did. "Who?" was the only word that escaped her lips.

"A guy named Tunis, East Coast talent; you might not be familiar with him. But he most likely _is_ in Artie's employ and it looks like he's a whole lot better at this stuff than poor old Mickey."

McCormick watched the judge standing silent for a moment, balancing forward just a hair, before he shoved it in to the hilt.

"What did you tell Artie," he said, suddenly harsh, "that you and the doc here had the goods on him? That's a hell of a negotiating ploy to get an extra cut of the pie. Community property wasn't enough, huh?"

"It was nothing like that," the woman flustered. "I told you he's dangerous. I had to take steps to protect myself." She glanced back at Westerfield, as though expecting understanding, and, when that didn't appear to be immediately forthcoming, she huffed lightly and turned again to the judge. "Mickey was there to make sure that my husband _didn't_ have the doctor killed. It was all a foolish accident."

"All Louie did was get in the way," Westerfield said, "and he was killed for it."

He was quiet, but firm. He had her attention again, but it was only another slightly puzzled look, as if he had spoken a non sequitur. She gave up on it after the briefest of moments and resorted to a different tack. Mark thought the pout didn't fit her age or the subject matter, but it looked like it belonged to a woman who was used to getting her way.

"_I_ had nothing to do with any killings."

"Look," Hardcastle said, "Your guy is dead, and the chances are high that he killed someone while working for you. Doesn't matter if it wasn't the guy you hired him to kill or even if you didn't spell it out for him. It makes you an accessory."

"You have no proof of any of this."

Hardcastle shrugged. "That may be, though I think I can find some if I keep looking. But even if I don't, even if you walk away from all of this smelling like that two-hundred-dollar-an-ounce perfume you've got on, you'll still have Artie to worry about, and pretty soon _he's_ gonna figure out that you've been spinning a story, that the doc here doesn't have anything on him and just thinks he's in the wholesale meat business."

He squinted at her, then shook his head once, as if he'd done some quick calculating and come up with something undeniable but surprising.

"You _are_ scared of him, huh? Sly Romney, he was what, your uncle? That's right, isn't it? And your dad, Max Romney, he was killed a year or so back. Was that an accident? Or maybe you're not sure. You've lost all your damn leverage, looks like—no wonder you got depressed and started seeing a shrink."

"No proof, _none_," she said. It almost sounded like a mantra.

The judge waved it away. "Doesn't matter. Don't need any. Artie still believes, that's all that counts. We go to him; we stir things up. Maybe we'll try and swing a deal of our own, cut you out."

"You wouldn't, that's . . . _extortion_."

"—or maybe we'll set him up, and take him down. You'd be grateful for that, wouldn't you? Except you know once he's busted, he'll throw as much dirt on you as he's got. It'll take a whole case of that perfume to get out from under the stink."

The pout was gone, and in its place a thin-lipped expression.

"Or . . ." he let it sit in the air for a moment, a hook to hang hope upon. "Maybe you'll throw in with us."

"But what about . . .?" She gestured with a nod of her chin toward Westerfield's bandaged shoulder. "And the other thing, that man you said was killed."

Hardcastle frowned. Mark watched him hold that, staring carefully in Westerfield's direction. It was a long moment, and the nod he got from the psychiatrist was barely perceptible, but it seemed to be enough.

"An accident. You sent the man to be a bodyguard. Louie spoiled his aim. The doc here is the only real witness."

"And the other part?" Mrs. Cartori said warily.

"Not your doing, not part of your deal with O'Donell. You were appalled to find he'd done such a thing. Assuming he even did it. No witnesses at all, no proof."

A smile crept onto the woman's face. It might have been momentarily triumphant. Then she cut another sharp glance in Westerfield's direction and it backed down to something far less smug.

Mark followed her gaze and understood the source of her unease. There was something in Westerfield's look that did more than echo the judge's veiled threats.

"I never meant any harm," she said. Her conciliatory tone sounded like she hadn't gotten much practice, but at least she knew what words to say, which was a start.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

In the end she came semi-willingly but insisted on taking her own vehicle. That left Mark and Westerfield back in the truck, sedately bringing up the rear of the little parade back to Gulls Way.

He was glad of it, really, glad to have some plan of action, or at least to know that Hardcastle had one, and especially glad not to have that woman occupying the seat between him and the doc, sniffing and pouting and looking put upon. On the other hand, the empty space and the tense silence was no picnic, either.

They were back on the Pacific Coast Highway, and picking up speed, when the man in the passenger seat finally let out a long breath.

"Tough day for personal integrity," Westerfield said with an almost audible grimace of self-deprecation.

Mark took his eyes off the road for a split-second. The man's rueful expression matched his tone.

He ran through the morning's actions and drew a blank. Then he squinted at the Caddie up ahead and finally said, "Well, she's a piece of work all right but, hey, she probably wasn't lying about not trying to have you killed. I don't think she's someone who feels like she has to lie. If something's in her best interest it _is_ the right thing to do."

Westerfield exhaled again. "That's a pretty good insight, but that wasn't what I was referring to."

"What, then? I mean, yeah, she set the wheel in motion, at least the one involving you and Louie getting shot . . . Oh."

He glanced sideward again. The psychiatrist's mouth was set thinly.

"Louie, huh?"

Westerfield nodded. "It's kind of easy to misplace him in the bigger picture, I suppose. But I'll give Milt credit; he definitely flashed some signals before he offered her the deal. I can't say he went behind my back."

Mark sighed. "Look, it's practical justice. Sometimes that's the best you can get. Chances are O'Donell is the guy who shot Louie, and he's already answering to a Higher Authority. And Mrs. Cartori didn't even spare Louie enough thought to have had a direct hand in having him killed. And indirect, well, that'd be damn hard to prove even if O'Donell _wasn't_ dead. We'll just have to take what we can get."

He ended with a decisive nod and then, after a moment, added, "Anyway, you'd be surprised how often what goes around, comes around."

The psychiatrist looked thoughtful for a moment and then finally answered, almost under his breath, "Louie might've half agreed with you on that."

00000

Mrs. Cartori looked mildly surprised to find herself in the handsomely appointed study at Gulls Way rather than an interview room at the police station. There was a slight crook to her smile, too, a hint of satisfaction as though the understated luxury of the surroundings, purportedly belonging to a mere _judge_, had convinced her that Hardcastle was someone she could deal with. She seated herself in a wingback chair with the air of entitlement.

McCormick held back for a moment and snatched for Hardcastle's arm, keeping him in the hallway as well. Westerfield, looking down pensively, nearly collided with them.

"What's next?" Mark asked, low but sharp, not wanting to risk a united front, but very much wanting to know which trench he was going to be occupying. "You have got a plan, haven't you?"

Hardcastle looked at him with some surprise. "_Yeah_, I've got a plan. If you wanna come in here, I'll lay it out for you."

McCormick frowned and glanced back at Westerfield, then gave the judge another hard look. "Maybe you want to give me a general outline _before_ you explain it all to Lucretia Borgia in there. I mean, I'm not sure I want my client involved in anything too shady."

"Shady?" Hardcastle snorted. "Listen, kiddo, the day I listen to a lecture on ethics from you will be the day I hang up my cleats and take up fly-fishing full time . . . _shady_." He shook his head.

Mark didn't budge and didn't blink. Hardcastle frowned and finally glanced around the doorway at the woman in the chair, now sorting through her purse for something. She got a quick, reassuring smile from him, and gave nothing in return. Then he ushered the other two back through the front door and onto the porch.

"Listen," he said, with less impatience that Mark would've expected, a patently bad sign in the shady department, "it might be a little dicey but it's all ethical." He said that last word as though it was the most important one of all. "Anyway," he added a little defensively. "None of it's illegal. We've got a hit man running around out there. He's already shown he means business, and he's got at least one more contract," he jerked his chn in Westerfield's direction, "maybe two. But worse still, if we just get him, and not the guy who hired him, we won't even know where the next try may come from."

Mark cocked his head for a moment, included Westerfield in his glance, and nodded.

"So, I say we nail him," Hardcastle smiled thinly. "I mean Cartori, and nail him good. Be nice if we could get Tunis at the same time; it'd save Frank and his guys a lot of time and effort and not run the risk of Tunis skipping back to Jersey."

"There's only one way you can draw Tunis out," Mark pinched the bridge of his nose, "and that's with bait."

"Well, yeah," the judge replied, as though that part went understood. "And we've got the fixings for some prime stuff. She must've told the hubby she'd told the doc lots of dirt. That was going to be her lever. Only she didn't realize a lever won't work unless you have a place to stand. She's lost almost all her backing. It'd be easier for Cartori to kill her than pay her off. But she's got him just a little worried. Now he's got to get the doc here, _and_ the file, before he can do her in."

He was facing Westerfield full on. "That wasn't the goodness of her heart that made her send O'Donell after you, to keep Tunis off your back. She was protecting her insurance—you and the dirt in the non-existent file."

"Sounds logical."

"But what we've got here is all the fixings of a fake file, between what's in my _real_ file, your handwriting, and Mrs. Cartori's insider information. All we need to do is put together a couple of convincing pages. You've got some blank sheets in that medical chart there?" He gestured to the one Westerfield had tucked under his good arm. "Between the three of us, I think we'll be able to make him an offer he can't refuse. Only I'm betting he'll do a double cross and try to get it all for nothing."

Westerfield pondered solemnly, and finally gave it a nod.

"You'll need a go-between," Mark interjected, turning sharply to the doc before he could even open his mouth. "Makes sense. I'm your lawyer. Besides, I'm twenty years younger and haven't been shot yet this week. Makes a lot of sense to let me go point."

"It's not your problem," the shrink said quietly.

"It's isn't exactly _yours,_ either," Mark replied with what he thought was self-evident logic. The doc looked stubbornly unconvinced.

Hardcastle pushed the argument to the back with a quick gesture. "Look, we'll figure out who does the deal after we have something to deal with." He ushered Westerfield before him, back into the house, Mark following along reluctantly. He spoke half over his shoulder to the younger man. "If it makes you feel any better, you can call Frank and get him on board and up to speed. However we do this, we're going to have some back-up."

"I'll bet this Tunis guy knows how to use a sniper scope," Mark said glumly, and no one tried to persuade him otherwise as the other two men headed back into the house.

00000

It was late-afternoon when Frank finally showed up. Mark let him in the front door, and led him past the closed doors to the den, temporarily ignoring his questioning look.

In the kitchen Mark allowed himself an expression of more open disapproval and said, brusquely. "They're conferencing."

"And you're not?" Frank asked as he took a seat at the table, laying a file down in front of him.

"I suppose you don't want your lawyer around when you're agreeing to do something stupid. That and nobody likes a wet blanket." McCormick shrugged. He fetched two cups of coffee and brought them to the table, casting a predatory eye on the file. "That's what you came up with on 'em?"

"The latest on Cartori, and everything we've got on Tunis. That bit is hot off the wires. Took a while for it all to come through. This is Sunday, you know."

"Lady Justice never sleeps—cat naps, maybe, but who can tell with the damn bandage over her eyes . . . and she definitely doesn't take weekends off."

"You're tellin' me," Frank sighed and then after a moment's contemplative silence, perhaps over past weekends and what they had been lost to, he added, "I suppose I ought to go in there and see how far they've gotten."

"Nope." Mark shook his head. "You won't approve, I'm pretty sure of that." He reached for the file. "You'd better stay out here and work on your plausible deniability."

The silence barely had time to settle in again before it was interrupted by footsteps, followed shortly by Hardcastle in the doorway, papers in hand, looking cautiously pleased.

"Hey, Frank, thought I heard you pull up. We were kind of preoccupied." He cast a glance at McCormick and the file, sidling in a little closer.

Mark kept a grip on what he was studying, only relinquishing it when Hardcastle wordlessly offered an exchange. Even that did little to relieve the tension. McCormick grimaced at the new reading material.

Frank sat there, eyebrows up just a bit, until it was finally handed over to him. The eyebrows rose further as he scanned the page.

"Hot stuff," he said dryly. "Is it all true?"

Hardcastle glanced up sharply from the file. "I hope it is."

"It'll probably bring the dogs out, if you let 'em have a sniff of this."

"We'll need a copy," Mark said casually. "Can't hand him the original; he'd never believe the doc'd do that."

Hardcastle studied him closely for a moment and then said, "No complaints? I'm not twisting your client's arm, making him spit on the Hippocratic Oath and all that?"

"I already tried that argument. Didn't work." He said it flatly, with no apparent rancor.

"Exactly," the judge smiled, "and he's _not_ violating any oaths, not his professional code of ethics either." It was an obvious attempt at conciliation. "These aren't real medical records and the patient is sitting in there acting in full knowledge and cooperation."

"I already said you won," McCormick sighed. "I'll go make the copies." He was up from the chair and shifting his jacket on one-handed, never letting loose of the papers. "Sunday, mostly everything closed. I'll just run down to the office. Okay?"

Hardcastle was still eyeing him narrowly. Mark switched hands and finished shrugging the jacket on.

"Traffic's light. It won't take me that long," he added calmly. "Then what? You going to try and set it up today?"

It was all soothingly matter-of-fact and cooperative, without quite straining credulity. He watched the judge gradually relax as he worked through the next steps.

"Yeah, I think so. If we can reach him," he added. "Makes sense to do it quick while we've got all the pieces in place and before he has a chance to find out his wife went off with somebody."

Mark floated it one more time, very non-challenging, a mere suggestion. "I ought to be the go-between. I've had practice. He won't believe Westerfield would take a risk like this solo."

"Cartori doesn't know him, and the papers, without him, might not be enough bait. Besides, the doc wouldn't want to involve anyone else if he really _was_ using those records to score a payment."

Mark gave this a nod, as if quietly bowing to the inevitable. Then, leaving no more room for a debate he wasn't going to engage in anyway, he departed.

00000

He took the Coyote. Speed was definitely going to be a factor, even though he did know of a place with a copy machine that was open on Sunday and a lot closer than the office. He made it there in just shy of ten minutes, fed the coins into the slot and had the job done in a couple minutes more.

He leaned against the machine, studying the document. Up to this point, what he'd done just qualified as efficiency. He could get in the car, turn north on the PHC and be back at the estate in another ten minutes.

Westerfield would make the phone call; he'd do whatever Hardcastle asked him to do. They were friends, and the judge could be damn persuasive. Add to that whatever guilt the doc was carrying around about Louie's death, and it was a perfect set-up for ill-considered risk-taking. He'd arrange the meet, and confront Cartori, or, more likely, Tunis himself.

Frank and the judge would make it as foolproof as possible, but they'd have to let the thing play out a little, to make the arrests stick. And how many of these crazy situations turned into a test of fast reflexes and a matter of knowing exactly when to jump?

Mark took one last look at the document. At least Westerfield's writing was fairly decent; he wouldn't have much trouble reading it out loud. He stepped over to the phone and dialed the number he'd committed to memory from the file Frank had briefly lent him.

00000

Mrs. Cartori had been abandoned in the den. The three men occupied the kitchen. It was another conference of sorts, the first part consisting of way and means, contingency plans and general coaching from Hardcastle to Westerfield. Slowly, though, and without any abrupt transition, the judge's attention began to drift.

It started with one quick look at the clock, followed a few minutes later by a confirmatory check of his watch. After that came a glance out the back door, down toward the garage, and finally another check of the watch.

"Traffic," Frank said quietly.

"It's light today," the judge bit back sharply.

Westerfield had caught the concern and was frowning now, too. "He wouldn't—" and then he interrupted himself with a shake of his head that indicated he was answering his own unasked question.

The judge was on his feet, already moving toward the phone even before it rang, briefly freezing him in his tracks.

He grabbed for it and kept his greeting to a terse 'Hello?'

The hello from the other end was impossibly, aggravatingly calm, and was followed by an equally mild, "Should I talk to Frank?"

"That depends," Hardcastle growled. "Where the hell are you?"

"Listen," Mark said, still quiet, still calm, "the call is already made. You can't do anything about it and yelling at me won't change a thing. Think about it; it's better this way. More believable, at any rate: the shady two-bit ex-con lawyer trying to turn a little profit on the side. That makes more sense than a guy with a list of credentials as long as your arm, trying to cash in on a one-time deal, and leaving himself at the mercy of a thug like Cartori."

Hardcastle said nothing. He didn't think there was anything he could say just then that he wouldn't regret in five minutes.

"Good," Mark said, apparently not picking up on what he hadn't said. "I'd hoped you'd get it. Now, I've got the meeting set for six p.m. I know that's not a lot of time, but, like you said, it's better to get this thing rolling before he's got time to think it through, right?"

The judge managed a growl. It might have, charitably, been interpreted as agreement.

"Don't worry; it's a good spot."

He gave the address, the parking lot of a restaurant closed for remodeling. They'd eaten there a few times in the past, and Hardcastle could picture the layout.

"See? I'm being sensible; I'm keeping you informed. I know I need the cavalry there, just not _too_ many troops. That'd scare them off. I looked Tunis' file over. He _is_ good with a rifle. That means he'll probably stay a ways off, and out of sight, but Cartori won't want him shooting from _too_ far away, since he's going to be down there in the lot with me. He won't want it to be a hundred-yard shot."

"Yeah," Hardcastle finally grumbled. "There's a hill right behind the lot. That'd make the most sense."

"Exactly. One hill, how hard can it be to intercept him there?"

"In the dark? And we don't even know for sure that that's where he'll be?" The judge heard his voice rising.

"Sorry." The man on the other end of the line sounded contrite, but firm. "It's the best I could do on the spur of the moment."

"_No_." This time the growl was clear in its meaning. "The best would be to shut this down right now. Meet us here. We'll call him back and—"

"I told you," Mark interrupted, still very calm but equally firm, "it's done. Try to pull out now and we have nothing, except that Tunis will get one more contract, and we won't know when or where he'll deliver."

There it was, all on the table, with the minutes ticking by and no chance left for an appeal to reason. Still, Hardcastle tried.

"A wire and a bullet-proof vest—"

"No time. You get Tunis, he'll turn on Cartori. Besides, the guy favors a head shot, leastwise that's what the files say." There was a long, slow breath from the other end of the line. "Okay," Mark finally said, "I gotta get rolling; you, too. I'll see you when it's over. You can tell me what a total screw-up I am."

That was obviously meant to be light, but there was something in McCormick's tone that revealed the worry underneath. The judge wondered for a split-second if it was more the potential for getting shot at, or the fear of what would happen afterwards, even if he _didn't_.

And then, even before he could say anything, he heard the quick 'Bye' and the line went dead. He stood there for a moment with it in his hand, then gradually became aware that the other two men were staring at him, and he'd been scowling the whole time.

"Mark?" Frank asked unnecessarily.

He looked down at his watch then up at Frank. "How quick can you get me a couple of tach guys and maybe a sniper?"

"Milt, it's Sunday evening and we're all the way up here. Even if someone's just standing around waiting for the call it'll take time." Harper didn't look happy. "What's he gone and done?"

He told him. By the time he'd finished the quick outline, Frank was scowling, too, and even Westerfield looked troubled.

"Okay," Hardcastle rubbed his temple, "maybe a black and white. The closest one you've got, but they come here first and you get 'em organized. I'll go on ahead and try and get in position before these guys show up."

"_Milt_—"

"He didn't leave us a whole lot of options here, Frank. I don't have time to wait for the backup and we can't send them straight there."

He was already headed for the hallway toward the den, and the most convenient firepower he could lay his hands on quickly. Frank had moved to the phone. Westerfield was on his feet, too, only a couple steps behind him.

"What can I do?"

Hardcastle gave him a quick look over his shoulder. The man looked pale, worried, and deeply unhappy. The judge knew the next bit wasn't going to cheer him up any.

"Stay here. Keep an eye on that woman. I'd rather not have her arrested, but I don't want her to skedaddle when the cops show up here. You can keep her distracted?"

Westerfield frowned. He looked like a man who had just figured out his place in the greater scheme of things and wasn't too pleased about it. He finally let out a sigh.

"Sure, I'll talk to her. I'm pretty good at that." He flashed a wan smile. "Will you please be careful?"

The judge managed a smile back; maybe it was a little brittle. "Always," he said bluffly. Then he ducked into the den and headed for the wall safe.

The woman in the chair glanced up, only mildly interested, but more so when he pulled out a gun and holster. She started to sit up straighter and looked like she was going to pepper him with questions. The doc stepped in, propped himself on the edge of the desk that was between the other two, and transferred his smile to her, now subtly transmuted into a look of reassurance.

Hardcastle heard him say, "Things seem to be coming along pretty quickly. . ." as he ducked back out and headed for the front door.

00000

McCormick cruised in slowly, cutting his lights almost as soon as he hit the turnoff, hoping to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness. It appeared that he'd beaten everyone else there, at least everyone who was willing to be seen.

There was always the possibility that Cartori wouldn't even show, that he'd send Tunis to do all his negotiating for him and that it would be the kind that wasn't done face to face. He'd bought himself all the insurance he could, reading off a couple of the juicier paragraphs out loud, assuring the mobster there was more where that came from, and that he wouldn't get it all until cash had changed hands.

He'd really left the man no option but to try and take him out, but preferably after he had his hands on the original document. What existed of that, all three pages of it, was stuffed under the passenger seat of the Coyote. Mark climbed up out of the parked car slowly, watching carefully for any movement on the shadowy hill behind the lot. The nearby sound of the surf covered subtle sounds.

Headlights cut across the lot. Mark turned his head away trying to save his night vision, feeling slightly relieved. It was another car entering. He just stood there, copy in hand.

A man emerged from the car, the back seat, so there was at least a driver, maybe more muscle.

He said what he was supposed to say. "I told you to come alone." He put a little nervous edge on it, which wasn't all that difficult under the circumstances.

Cartori was clear of the car now, stocky and very dangerous-looking even all by himself.

"You want a payoff, it'll be by my rules," the man said. He had a flashlight in his hand. "Bring it here."

Mark worked up a scowl, but complied. He needed to string this out as much as possible, without ever appearing to balk completely. The pages were handed over. Cartori didn't even bother to keep an eye on him. His whole attention was on the papers, moving his lips slightly, and squinting a little.

"They're copies," he finally growled.

"Course they are," Mark shrugged. "I'm not stupid."

"The originals?"

"In a safe place."

"And if I pay you, what's to guarantee you haven't made more copies?"

Mark let out an impatient, lawyerly sigh. "The copies won't mean a thing as evidence—too easy to diddle." He smiled and said, "Ask your lawyer."

Cartori shot him a look, then grabbed the papers up in a tight fist, crumpling them and then tossing them to the ground. "The doc, he in on this with you?"

"Nah." Mark shook his head slowly. "He came to me for advice, wanted to know what to do about this information he had. That was after one of your goons took a shot at him and he put two and two together."

"Not mine," Cartori growled. "That was Maggie's guy. Dunno why the hell _she_ wanted to knock him off. Broads, who knows what makes 'em tick?" Then he scowled. "The doc must've pissed her off pretty good." The scowl deepened. "If he hurt her . . ."

Mark frowned. The last thing he wanted was to be confided in. The next thing would be a job offer, and then he'd never get shot at.

"Two hundred grand," he said harshly.

Cartori looked up sharply from his reverie. "You said a hundred thou on the phone."

"That's the half up front," Mark smiled insolently. "The rest I want on delivery. You'll get to inspect the goods." He was watching carefully now, half expecting a signal, something that would originate from Cartori, maybe reinforced with a blink of the headlights.

But, no, still negotiating. The mobster gave him a slow up and down and then said, "Might be even more in it for you than that, if you can give me the shrink, too."

_Dammit_, _not that way_. First an offer, then pretty soon an offer he couldn't refuse, and a quick hustle into the car. He tried to look pensive, like a man who was considering the step over the line between blackmail and murder, and hadn't quite made up his mind yet.

He looked over his shoulder one more time, hoping it wasn't too obvious. No signs of anything on the hill. He brought his gaze back to Cartori and took a slow, cautious step backwards.

"I dunno, have to think about it."

The back door of the vehicle was opening again, the driver's door, too. He supposed he might have miscalculated. Maybe Tunis hadn't been readily at hand, maybe Cartori would let the local boys handle this; in which case, he was earnestly hoping for a kidnapping, not a murder. His second step back was more definite, and then he pivoted suddenly and took off running for the Coyote.

He heard a shot, felt nothing, and realized they were aiming for the tires. They really did want him alive, at least for now. He did a quick calculation of how far he'd get in his car with at least one full flat, then bypassed it and had made it another ten yards before he was flattened from behind.

Another gunshot, this one with an echo, as though from a little further off, and the guy pinning him down was at least momentarily distracted enough to allow McCormick to get an elbow in his ribs. Some scuffling, but he wasn't getting the upper hand, then another gunshot, some shouting, and the sound of approaching sirens.

The whole thing balanced on the edge for a split second, while the man who had him pinned down apparently did some quick calculating. Then, just as suddenly, he must've decided he didn't want to go for employee of the month. Mark felt the pressure ease up. The guy scrambled away, trying to bolt into the darkness but suddenly caught in the lights from the squad car that had pulled up.

Mark heeded the general announcement for everyone to freeze. He'd only made it as far as his knees anyway and it would have been stupid to get shot at this point. He turned to look over his shoulder again, moving slowly, carefully. There were figures at the base of the hill, too far away and too poorly lit for him to be exactly sure who was who.

Then Frank was there, offering him a hand up.

"You okay?" he asked.

Mark got to his feet, straightened up slowly, felt a crick or two that might have something more definitive to say to him in the morning, and finally said, "Yeah, pretty much."

Frank nodded, still looking a little doubtful, and handed him a handkerchief. "Your face."

Mark reached up and touched it, his hand coming away damp and a little sticky. He put the cloth to it and muttered. "Nothing. A scrape." And then he looked back toward the hill. "We got 'em? Tunis, too?"

Frank nodded again, pretty reticent for a guy who'd just scored a big catch.

"Cartori says his wife hired O'Donell," Mark offered quietly.

"That's good," Frank exhaled, hands in his pockets. "They'll all probably be scrambling to dump the goods on each other. And Tunis isn't even one of the family." There was a pause, and then, "He had a rifle and a scope."

"And Hardcastle?" Mark was squinting worriedly now.

"Milt's fine; he got behind him while he was distracted, watching you." Harper frowned. "How much damage control am I going to have to do with what you said to Cartori?"

Mark thought maybe someday he'd get a tattoo. It'd say 'flagrant necessity', maybe with oak leaf clusters.

"I did what I had to do, Frank. I wasn't going to let the doc let himself get talked into one of these things. The learning curve is too damn steep."

"We'll need to hear it from you, all of it," Frank said flatly. "But we've got enough physical evidence for tonight. You can head home." There was an unspoken implication there, that maybe he was being given time to get his story straight.

More vehicles were pulling up. Mark looked back toward the Coyote, listing slightly back onto the now-flat rear tire. "I'll need a flatbed tow back to the estate. Maybe you could call in for me?" He cast one more worried look at the cluster over by the hill, then shook his head. "I can catch a ride home with the driver." He dabbed at his cheek again with the handkerchief and studied the results.

Frank nodded again, just once and said, "I'll call. Might take a bit."

" 'S okay, I'll wait. I'm fine."

He strolled back to the Coyote. From the corner of his eye he watched Harper walk off toward the hill. He did not follow that further, except to notice that one figure had detached itself from the small crowd and was intercepting Frank. After that he kept his eyes on the car, giving it a close inspection.

He'd stooped down to find the entry wound on the tire, when the shadow fell across him—a standing figure just to his right against the beams of one of the squad cars.

"You okay?" It was terse and gruff.

"Yeah," Mark looked up, over his right shoulder. He couldn't make out the expression against the back light. "You?"

"I'm fine. You got some blood on your face."

"Nothing. A scrape. I've got a hankie." He reached back into his hip pocket, pulled it out and held it in the light, more dirt than blood. "See? _Fine_." He realized his pitch had gone up, and there was more tension in his tone than he'd meant to reveal.

He backed it down a notch and said, very calmly. "I've gotta wait for the tow truck. They took out a tire." He was on his feet again, and kicked it once. "And that's what they were aiming for, _too_," he added.

"Okay." He heard the other man backing down, as well.

He supposed that was a good thing, though it didn't feel that way, much to his surprise. He turned to say something else, and found he was looking at Hardcastle walking away. He closed his mouth and leaned back against the rear quarter of the Coyote, feeling sore and tired, and very unsettled.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

The light was on in the den, but there were no extra vehicles in the drive, when he finally got back to the estate. He got the Coyote off-loaded, paid the driver and thanked him, and then stood there for a moment, pondering the meaning of the silence.

Eventually he gave up, or maybe he thought he'd figured it out but decided he didn't like the answer. He reached into the Coyote and fetched out the original pages, along with the crumpled copy he quietly recovered from where it had been knocked in the scuffle that surrounded Cartori's arrest. Their very existence made him nervous, not so much for his own role as _agent provocateur_, but because Westerfield's signature was on them. He was contemplating a quick fire in the gatehouse hearth.

Besides, he'd decided he was already in so deep that one more act of defiance really mattered very little. But he thought he wasn't in the mood for a confrontation tonight, not that it looked like he was going to get one. All he really wanted to do was wash his face off, destroy some evidence, and stare at the ceiling over his bed for a while. Everything else could wait until morning.

He slunk off to the gatehouse.

Even with all his well thought-out suppositions, he was half-expecting to find Hardcase sitting on the sofa, and had already measured out a very calm greeting. But finding the living room empty hardly surprised him either.

He put the papers down on the edge of the hearth, then went into the kitchen to find some matches. He almost didn't hear the very un-Hardcastle-like tap on the door. He sighed as he went to answer it, thinking if they were reduced to tapping and waiting, things were very bad indeed.

But it was Westerfield.

"Oh," Mark said, and then pasted a small and belated smile of welcome onto his look of surprise. "_Oh,_" he said again after a very brief moment's thought and a gesture to usher the man in. "It's Sunday. You want a ride home."

The doc had stepped past him, into the room, and was giving the place a sweeping look, not unlike when he had first entered the judge's den.

"Well," Mark shut the door and followed him in, "one of the tires on the Coyote is shot and . . ." His smile became slightly more genuine. "I mean _shot_." He made it half-way to a grin and then that fell apart. "Maybe the truck . . . um, is he home yet?"

Westerfield was by the sofa. He glanced over his shoulder and nodded. "Yeah, 'bout an hour ago. Said everything was settled but he didn't go into the details much. The lieutenant came and got Mrs. Cartori. No handcuffs, though." The doc looked pensive for a moment. "I think I'm going to recommend another therapist to her."

Then he looked up again. "I don't need to get home right away. It can wait."

McCormick gestured him to sit and he did, almost immediately looking more focused.

"So what happened?"

He told him, and to his surprise he started the story way back at the kitchen, complete with machinations, as if telling the truth now could somehow make up for lying then. Or maybe it was that he needed advice, and advice based on lousy data wouldn't help much.

It didn't surprise him that Westerfield's pensive look was back. Told outright, in uncompromising detail, it sounded pretty bad.

"Well, I suppose that explains the grim atmosphere." Westerfield leaned back and slowly crossed his legs, as though it was a definite three-pipe problem. "Not that I recommend sulking as a method of conflict resolution."

Mark didn't ask who was doing the sulking. He suspected the answer would be, quite reasonably, 'Both of you.'

"But," the psychiatrist continued, "I think I'm the one who ought to be offended. There I was, all ready to do the hero thing, and I get yanked out and benched at the last minute."

"Hey," Mark's smile was only a little chagrined, "remember how that guy in the E.R. said your arm would snap like a matchstick if you fell on it?" he pointed to his own cheek. "The guy weighed at least 225."

"I suppose," Westerfield sulked just slightly.

"Anyway," Mark sighed, "I have a feeling you don't really need the points." He paused, thinking the next part over briefly before he started up again. "You were in 'Nam, huh?"

The doc looked slightly startled. "Milt told you about that?"

"No," McCormick shook his head quickly, somehow not surprised either that he was right in his supposition, or that Westerfield had already confided in the judge. "He didn't say anything about it. I just figured, from what Louie had said—"

"Oh, yes." The doc frowned as if in sudden recollection of the conversation in the alley. "Yeah," he nodded, "a tour. But combat psychiatry isn't combat—hot, wet, lots of bugs, but not actually combat. All I did was tell them who was in good enough shape to go back to being shot at. Pretty easy." Something in the man's eyes belied the words.

Mark nodded; he had a sort of abstract understanding of the difference between doing something yourself, and telling someone else to do it. There were days that were like that for him now, too, and sometimes he deeply missed the simplicity of the recent past.

"But you're good at it," he finally said, "at giving advice."

"I try not to do that too much, you know. It's really better if people figure things out on their own. I just sometimes hold up the map, maybe point out the obvious."

Mark slid down into the chair opposite the sofa and scrubbed his face with his hand, wincing when he brushed the raw spot. "Oh, Doc, I think I'm way beyond the 'find your own way back' point." He looked up slowly and then shook his head. "I'll be the first to admit, I've screwed up plenty, but this is different; he's never shut down on me before. He's not usually the shutting-down type."

"Why do you think it's different this time?"

"I dunno." Mark looked at him in flat-out bewilderment. "I mean, besides being kind of blatantly defiant . . . and I wouldn't even say I've never done _that_ before."

"And pretty sneaky," Westerfield suggested thoughtfully.

McCormick sighed in reluctant agreement.

"And maybe showing a basic lack of trust."

"No," Mark brought his head up suddenly, "not that. Damn, I know I really can trust him to be totally belligerent about these things. He'd stopped listening to me on this one. And I was right, too; this was not a good set-up for a guy who'd already gotten shot once this week."

Westerfield shrugged lightly. He very pointedly raised the bad shoulder just fractionally. "Maybe not _your_ version, but he really had nailed down all the corners on the one where I was doing it." He smiled just slightly. "I can see why it makes him a little crazy when you pull stuff like this."

"'Crazy'?" Mark repeated the word with a hint of suspicion.

"Yeah," the doc's smile broadened just slightly. "In the common usage—stomp-off-and-tear-your-hair-out crazy. You scared him tonight and he's not someone who's comfortable with the idea that he can be afraid."

"But," Mark protested, "he's sent me into stuff at least as dangerous as this."

Westerfield's gaze was level.

"Well," McCormick admitted after having been subjected to a long, steady look, "maybe not usually this _spontaneous_, but plenty dangerous."

"You hate it when he works without a spotter," Westerfield pointed out.

"Yeah." It was spoken sullenly. Mark could see where this was going and it annoyed the heck out of him. "_Yeah_," he said again, as if he might get the damn insight over with a little faster that way.

"Okay, well, in his case it's probably a lot worse."

"Huh?"

"You feel concern from a sense of friendship and affection. He's a mentor, someone you're deeply attached to." Westerfield held one palm out flat, as though offering the obvious. McCormick recognized it as half of a familiar gesture.

He nodded. "I worry about him and I guess he worries about me. The same reasons, but maybe he wouldn't admit it so easy."

"Yes," the doc said, "not _just_ the same reasons, though."

Mark looked at him, puzzled.

"There's all of that, to be sure, but on his side there's something else. A sense of . . . I'm not sure if _guilt_ is the right word—"

"Well, _I'm_ pretty sure it's not," Mark interrupted dryly.

"Okay," the other man conceded, "maybe we'll call it a sense of responsibility."

"I'm not his son."

"That's another matter entirely." Westerfield paused and sat back a little, as though he was trying to find the right words. "'With great power comes great responsibility,'" he said, half to himself.

"Oh no, now you're quoting Spiderman." Mark grinned. "I'm Tonto, remember?"

The older man looked at him speculatively. "Yes," he said, "and he made you that. And before that . . . well, he knows he made you _that_, too."

Mark shook his head firmly. "Uh-uh. Not really. Listen, it took me years to figure it out. That was the _system_. A jury of my peers—which means I must be an idiot," he added in quick aside and managed another grin, only slightly less than convincing. "He was just part of the system . . . and eventually he fixed what he could."

"'Part of the system'? If only it were that easy." Westerfield took a slow breath in and added, "He takes his responsibilities seriously—all those files."

"It's not out of guilt," Mark said flatly.

"But it _is_ a responsibility, trust me. Lots of responsibility, but not much power."

He paused again for a moment, as if to let that sink in, and then continued on, a little slower but with absolute certainty. "If you did something rash, something he had no immediate control over, and if something went wrong, he'd still feel responsible. You've steered your ship by his star for a while now—"

"My choice."

"Not at the start, and the start is what determined the rest."

McCormick sat silently, brows knitted, but came up with no further rebuttal. He finally leaned forward a bit, propping his chin on the heel of his hand.

"So, what did you say to _him_ about the sulking and the conflict resolution and all?"

Westerfield was smiling again. "Oh, pretty much the same drill. Oh, and I told him I was taking you both out for breakfast tomorrow morning. Kind of a thank you. I figured I owed you that much, at least, for fixing all of this."

"It wasn't your fault."

"Maybe not my _fault_, but," he gestured one-handed toward his shoulder, "definitely my problem."

"Anyway, I think I owed you one," Mark returned the smile. "Probably more than one."

"Well, I hope you don't have any more opportunities to even the score," Westerfield said soberly.

"Yeah . . . we'll try to stick to routine legal stuff from now on. I do a mean 'deed of trust'."

"I'll keep that in mind."

They sat there for a moment, Mark still leaning in a bit, wanting to ask one more question, but not sure he wanted to hear the answer. The psychiatrist was eyeing him.

"By the way, he said 'yes'."

"Huh?"

"To breakfast. Right after he told me it wasn't my fault."

"_Ah_ . . ." Mark straightened up. "Breakfast, yeah, that'd be good." There was a hint of a smile on his face.

00000

He watched the man return from his self-appointed house call, listing a little toward his bad side and looking too tired for there to be any clear indication what the results of the mission had been.

The front door was unlocked, and slightly ajar. As he heard it open his swiveled his chair around to face the desk and looked intently down at some papers there. He did look up at the almost inaudible steps in the hallway.

Westerfield entered without a greeting, leaning a little on the handrail as he descended the two steps. He lowered himself into the nearest chair.

"You okay?" Hardcastle asked, studying him with some concern.

"Oh, yeah . . . just tired. Don't know why. Didn't do much today."

The judge stared at him for a moment and then shook his head. "Not much, huh?" The he cast a quick glance over his shoulder, out the window in the direction of the gatehouse. "And how's he?"

"Not as sore as he's going to be in the morning," the doc assured him.

The harrumph was halfway between 'good' and 'serves him right'. Westerfield shook his head and the judge managed to look just slightly rueful.

"Anyway, he said breakfast sounds like a good idea."

This time Hardcastle delivered a nod with an air of neutrality.

The psychiatrist accepted the apparent compromise. "Just don't expect him to be too contrite," he said. "At least he seems to understand why you're upset. That's a start. And I think he's genuinely sorry about that."

"'Upset', huh? Try ready to wring his neck for a fool stunt like that." The judge frowned. "I had to walk away from him tonight or I might've said something that . . ."

"What?" Westerfield prompted.

"Ah," Hardcastle cleared his throat rustily, still looking down at the desk in front of him. The rest came out as a mutter. "Maybe something I mighta wished I hadn'ta said later on."

"Like how scared you were?"

The judge looked up sharply.

"Don't worry," the doc smiled, "you don't have to tell him. He gets that part."

"He does, huh?" Hardcastle sat up a little stiffer. "Then why the hell does he run off and do these things, really crazy things?" the judge asked in exasperation. "We talked about this once . . ." he hesitated and then settled for the vague, "a long time ago. He promised me if he got a notion to do something stupid, he'd come and talk to me first."

"Well, might be," Westerfield's smile had gone a little thin, "but maybe you didn't promise to listen."

Hardcastle leaned back in his chair, mouth opening, and then closing, on no particularly apt response.

"Okay," Westerfield said, as he got to his feet slowly, "breakfast. I told Mark eight, that all right with you?"

Hardcastle nodded.

"Good. I thought we could all use the sleep." He straightened up. "I know I could." Then he turned and mounted the two steps, launching a half-wave as he departed.

00000

By morning the scrape had been joined by some impressive bruises on his jaw and and a tendency to move slowly and stiffly. That might have accounted for McCormick's look of remorse, but Hardcastle shook his head, bit his tongue and limited his comments to an offer to drive.

And it was accepted, with a fair amount of grace and just a hint of self-deprecation. After that there was a period of necessary discussion: the best breakfast place, and then the best route to take. There was company present; it stayed civil. This got them there, and from then on things went relatively smoothly, assisted by strawberries and whipped cream on the waffles, a few cups of decent coffee, and bacon, extra crispy.

McCormick chewed gently. Westerfield favored him with a glance, slightly knowing, and said, "Don't worry, it gets better after the first day."

The younger man took no apparent offense at the remark, or Hardcastle's snort, and from then on things drifted, slowly and almost imperceptibly, back to normal.

Then somewhere about half-way through the second pot of coffee the judge seemed to segue a bit.

"Louie, he didn't have any next-of-kin?"

"No." Westerfield didn't have to think about that one very long. "No one on any of his records. He said he was raised by his grandmother, but she apparently had died before he went into the Army."

"Indigent? Did he get disability payments?"

"He would have been eligible. I honestly don't think he ever bothered to collect them. He did have a couple of stays in the V.A. hospital. He didn't like it too much."

Hardcastle nodded at all of this. "Give me a couple of days. I'll work on it. It'll be that long before the coroner will release him anyway. You know, they take their time when they know there's no family clamoring for the remains."

Westerfield said nothing, but nodded once.

After that they sipped their coffee in relative silence—more solemn than tense, though. In the end the doc was dropped off at his office, assuring them he could get home by cab. Then the other two proceeded to Pico Street, where Joyce, the secretary, looked only slightly aghast at Mark's face, and accepted the brief description of how it had happened with the sort of aplomb that could only be acquired with frequent practice.

McCormick smiled reassuringly, then stepped back to his own office, feeling like he'd been away for a few weeks at least, and finding, contrary to all expectations, that the dreaded piece of paperwork was still precisely where he had left it on Friday afternoon.

He sighed. He sat. He picked up his pen. And then, after pondering for a few minutes more, he began to chew on it . . . very gently.


	7. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Three men stood at the graveside. One of them had never met the deceased; one had only seen him twice, and both of those occasions on the last day of his life. The other had known him, through the strangest of happenstances, for over twenty years.

The flag was folded and, in lieu of kin, was accepted by Mrs. Walterman. There were pallbearers from the mission, too, a small knot of men who looked strangely sober and imbued with an unaccustomed dignity. They were, in fact, the only semblance of a family that Louie had had in the past two decades. They wore mismatched suits taken from what Mrs. Walterman called 'The Bin of Impractical Clothing'.

Taps was played by a short, blond kid in a Boy Scout uniform—Joyce's 12-year-old nephew. Harper was there, too, along with a couple of ex-army guys from homicide, and a tech from the medical examiner's office, who had a brother who was MIA.

McCormick took a sideward glance as the last few notes rang out—row upon row of identical white markers, a haunting uniformity.

Then it was over, the last note dying, and they were dismissed by the chaplain, with only the filling in and the covering over to be done.

And one more marker.


End file.
